Submitting HTTP requests to Arbortext Publishing Engine
I was looking at this issue a while back, but I was pulled on to other issues. I'm now back trying to figure out how to submit requests to the Arbortext Publishing Engine remotely.
I read the documentation and it appears that SOAP requests might be the way to go. I noticed that the SOAP requests are converted to HTTP requests under the covers, so I decided to test things out. I installed PE on a server and it appears to be working normally. It appears that the HTTP request should be fairly straight forward, but I must be missing something.
I installed a Chrome plug-in so that I could submit HTTP GET / POST requests. Then, I tried the following:
POST http://PE_server/e3/e3?file-type=xml&type=pdf&f=convert
Body: .ditamap file pasted directly into the message body
PDF (e3.pdf) is returned. But only the .ditamap is processed; none of the topicrefs / graphics files are processed. At least this tells me the "process" is working. However, I need to be able to submit the .ditamap, .dita files, and graphics files.
POST http://PE_server/e3/e3?type=pdf&file=C:\local_directory\rest_api_guide.ditamap&f=convert
Get the error:
<p>
e3::convert: input file name 'C:\local_directory\rest_api_guide.ditamap' does not exist.<p><B>Other information</B><BR> <B>Version: </B>7.0 M060 <BR> <B>Platform: </B>Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard <BR></P>
Next I tried copying all files to the PE server in a local directory and specifying the file parameter using the local directory on the PE server. I got the same error.
I really want to submit a .zip file anyway, so I tried to paste the zip file itself into the request body and used the following request:
POST http://PE_server/e3/e3?file-type=zip&type=pdf&input-entry=rest_api_guide.ditamap&f=convert
I get the following error:
<p> Failed to create directory 'C:\Windows\TEMP\e3temp_556\zip-in\ cover_header.eps
The directory e3temp_556 gets created but zip-in does not. If I create the zip-in directory on the PE server, I still get the error, but instead of zip-in, I get zip-in1 (the directory is incremented each time).
I am obviously doing something wrong, but I have no idea what? I wanted to ensure that I understood how this process worked before implementing a SOAP client. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.