Michael Imhoff

Removing a page from a pdf

2011-12-16T08:33:00.000-05:00

If you're using Assembler, which comes with LiveCycle PDFG, chances are you're already familiar with http://help.adobe.com/en_US/livecycle/9.0/ddxRef.pdf.

Here's a simple DDX for removing a page (or pages) from a pdf:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<DDX xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/DDX/1.0/">
<PDF result="resultDoc">
<PDF source="inDoc" pages="1,3-last"/>
</PDF>
</DDX>

You'll notice that you have to specify all of the pages that you want to keep, and in this scenario we deleted page two.

Manually Uninstalling a DSC

2011-11-30T16:12:00.000-05:00

I can't condone manually tweaking the LiveCycle database, so I strongly encourage you to deal with Adobe Support if you ever run into a situation like this.

That being said, on a number of occasions a DSC wouldn't uninstall properly for me and thus I'm faced with the following error when trying to stop/uninstall it from Workbench or by using an Ant script:

2011-11-29 10:41:37,818 ERROR [org.jboss.ejb.plugins.LogInterceptor] RuntimeException in method: public abstract java.lang.Object com.adobe.idp.dsc.transaction.impl.ejb.adapter.EjbTransactionBMTAdapterLocal.doBMT(com.adobe.idp.dsc.transaction.TransactionCallback) throws com.adobe.idp.dsc.DSCException: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Service: YourCustomService version: 0.0 must be in a running state prior to stopping at com.adobe.idp.dsc.registry.service.impl.ServiceRegistryImpl.stop ServiceRegistryImpl.java:2003)

These are the sql scripts that will allow you to manually fix the state so that it can be uninstalled:

-- Get info about the service in question
select * from adobe.tb_sc_service where id = 'YourCustomService'
-- Chances are it's in a state of 2.
select * from adobe.tb_sc_service_configuration where service_uuid = (select service_uuid from adobe.tb_sc_service where id = 'YourCustomService')
-- Update the state to 0
update adobe.tb_sc_service_configuration set state = 0 where service_uuid = (select service_uuid from adobe.tb_sc_service where id = 'YourCustomService')

You should now be able to uninstall the dsc in Workbench.

Adobe LiveCycle ES2.5 SQL Server JDBC Driver

2011-11-17T08:42:00.000-05:00

To follow up with my previous post, if you're doing DSC development with a SQL Server backend and need connectivity from your development environment, you're going to want to make sure you're running the 1.6.0.14 JDK and are using the sqljdbc.jar located at [installdir]\Adobe LiveCycle ES2\lib\db\mssql. I'm fairly certain that this is a customized version of that driver and not the ones that you can simply download from Microsoft's website.

sqljdbc alternative

2011-11-17T08:36:00.000-05:00

If you're looking to download sqljdbc.jar or sqljdbdc.jar depending on what JRE/JDK you're running, you may want to also take a look at http://jtds.sourceforge.net/. This driver is a bit more flexible and will work with the latest 1.6 JDK that's distributed by Apple. You simply have to change your JNDI name to start with jdbc:jtds:sqlserver instead of jdbc:sqlserver.

2011-09-09T10:43:00.000-04:00

If you're trying to use custom datatypes from your dsc in the LiveCycle executeScript activity in workbench, you may run into the following error:

ERROR [com.adobe.workflow.AWS] Sourced file: inline evaluation of: ``import some.package.SomeClass; SomeClass pdfg = new SomeClass . . . '' : Typed variable declaration : Class: SomeClass not found in namespace : at Line: 2 : in file: inline evaluation of: ``import some.package.SomeClass; SomeClass pdfg = new SomeClass . . . '' : SomeClass

To resolve it, you not only need to have your class in the DataTypes section of your component.xml, but you also need to have that package defined in the Export Packages of your RunTime section of your component.xml.

Flex 3.5 and using asdocs

2011-05-13T22:30:00.000-04:00

I just noticed that running asdocs on 3.5 will throw the following error:

Loading configuration file C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash Builder 4\sdks\3.5.0\frameworks\flex-config.xml
Adobe ASDoc
Version 3.5.0 build 12683
Copyright (c) 2004-2007 Adobe Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Error: ” is not a directory
Use ‘asdoc -help’ for information about using the command line.

This is happening because the asdocs folder, and more importantly asdocs/templates folder wasn't included in the 3.5 distribution of the Flex SDK. Simply copy asdocs from 3.4 or another 3.x sdk and it'll work.

Connecting with the Gateway

2011-03-21T15:02:00.000-04:00

If you're working with Adobe Managed Services and try to connect via Workbench using the Adobe LiveCycle Gateway, there's a chance that port 8443 will be in use and prevent you from connecting. If that's the case and you're running IIS, you'll have to remove it's binding to 8443. I should add that many other services could use this port such as Apache, JBoss, etc, but if you're on a Windows 7 box it's a likely culprit.

This can be done by opening Computer Management under Administrative Tools, expanding Services and Applications, clicking on Internet Information Services, clicking on Sites, then inspect which of your sites are binding to 8443 and remove them manually (Bindings under Edit Site when the site is selected).

Using hand cursors in the flex tree

2011-03-10T09:30:00.000-05:00

Normally getting hand cursors to show on flex components involves setting useHandCursor="true", buttonMode="true", and mouseChildren="false". Sadly this blows up the tree as you aren't able to select anything. The way around this is to set useHandCursor="true" buttonMode="true" on your <mx:Tree/> component and then set super.mouseChildren = false in an itemRenderer like so:

package somepackage
{
import mx.controls.treeClasses.TreeItemRenderer;
import mx.controls.treeClasses.TreeListData;

public class ReportsTreeItemRenderer extends TreeItemRenderer
{
public function ReportsTreeItemRenderer()
{
super();
}

override public function set data(value:Object):void
{
super.data = value;

if( super.data )
{
super.mouseChildren = false;
if( TreeListData(listData).depth == 1 )
setStyle('fontWeight', 'bold');
else {
setStyle('fontWeight', 'normal');
}
}
}
}
}

DSC ClassNotFoundException

2011-03-09T09:08:00.000-05:00

Quite often when deploying DSC's you'll see errors such as "Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: No ClassLoaders found for: Map".
Quite often this is caused by not fully defined your input types such as <input-parameter name="credential" required="true" type="Map"> instead of <input-parameter name="credential" required="true" type="java.util.Map">.

DSC Deployment Issue

2011-03-08T08:18:00.000-05:00

When using the LiveCycle Component tool as I've blogged about in the past, sometimes you'll run into class issues when deploying your dsc to either a LiveCycle 8.2 or ES2 server that looks like the following:
Caused by: java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Bad version number in .class file

What you can do to rectify this is to specify the version that your javac task is targeting like so:

<target name="compile" depends="prepare">
<javac destdir="${classes.dir}" classpathref="class.path" debug="on" deprecation="on" optimize="off" target="1.5">
<src path="${src.dir}"/>
</javac>
</target>

SA_DS Datasource for Solution Accelerators

2010-09-24T11:41:00.002-04:00

The documentation for the LiveCycle SA's don't specify anything other than creating the SA_DS data source when using WebSphere for WebLogic. This data source name has already been added to the common building block and will automatically 'pickup' when LiveCycle is restarted. Here's the error message that you'll see if it hasn't been created.

[9/23/10 15:27:02:565 EDT] 000000aa RegisteredRes E WTRN0062E: An illegal attempt to use multiple resources that have only one-phase capability has occurred within a global transaction.

[9/23/10 15:27:02:573 EDT] 000000aa LocalTransact E J2CA0030E: Method enlist caught com.ibm.ws.Transaction.IllegalResourceIn2PCTransactionException: Illegal attempt to enlist multiple 1PC XAResources at com.ibm.ws.Transaction.JTA.RegisteredResources.enlistResource(RegisteredResources.java:416)

Eligibility Expressions in SNC

2010-09-02T08:29:00.004-04:00

One of the pieces of functionality that's called out in the Selection and Capture Building Block for Adobe LiveCycle is that you can leverage processes to perform the eligibility expression. Normally eligibility expressions are done using a jspl syntax such as ${(state=='CA')} but obviously this can only be so robust. Here's an example of the EligibilityExpressionTO that you'll need to define in your beans.xml:

Scrolling ViewStack Contents

2010-07-13T12:10:00.002-04:00

I ran into an interesting issue with a Flex app today as I couldn't constrain the contents of a viewstack properly. I ultimately wanted a scrollbar to appear if it's contents were larger than what the parent would allow. To enable this properly, the children all had height of 100%, the viewstack had a height of 100%, and the key setting was to give a minHeight of 50 or something small to the viewstack itself.

I also tried using resizeToContent which is great, but it still wouldn't allow the viewstack to get very short until I put the minHeight in.

LiveCycle Workbench ES Component Development Tool on Helios

2010-07-02T10:45:00.003-04:00

The new LiveCycle Workbench ES Component Development Tool for creating DSC's works just fine with the Eclipse Helios (3.6) for Java EE Developers edition. If you start with Helios you can skip past the requirements for EMF, GEF, and WTP and simply install the archive that you can download from Adobe Labs.

It's a nice tool to get you started with component development.

Crossdomain for LiveCycle

2010-07-02T10:42:00.001-04:00

I've been asked this question numerous times so I figured I would post it here. When you need to deploy a crossdomain.xml file for a LiveCycle install running JBoss, you'll have to dump it in the following location:

C:\Adobe\LiveCycle8.2\jboss\server\all\deploy\jbossweb-tomcat55.sar\ROOT.war

Compc not found...

2010-06-02T18:53:00.003-04:00

I was setting up another project today and I ran into an odd issue with compc in my ant tasks. Here is the error that I was getting:

compile:
[compc] java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: flex2/tools/Compc
[compc] Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: flex2.tools.Compc
[compc] at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
[compc] at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
[compc] at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
[compc] at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
[compc] at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
[compc] at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
[compc] at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(Unknown Source)
[compc] Could not find the main class: flex2.tools.Compc. Program will exit.
[compc] Exception in thread "main"

BUILD FAILED
D:\xx\xx\xx\build.xml:91: compc task failed.

This was the actual location of my flex_sdk:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash Builder 4 Plug-in (2)\sdks\3.2.0.3958

Oddly enough, I tried all sorts of different combinations to reproduce this in another location to no avail. After digging through the following posts I moved the sdk to the root of my drive and that seemed to do the trick.

For more reading:
http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-13003
https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-13602

LiveCycle Authentication with ColdFusion

2009-01-10T23:50:00.004-05:00

Here's a snippet of ColdFusion code that will allow you to athenticate a LiveCycle user using the AuthenticationManagerService service that's shipped with LCES 8.2. You can then use the results to pull the user's oid, userId, full name, etc, from the authenticateResponse.

More importantly, you can use the assertion string to implement SSO with SAML. Once you have the assertion, you can call validateAssertion on the same service to validate the user and get their information. In other words, you can perform the authentication using ColdFusion, and then for example, pass the assertion to your flex app so that you don't force the user to authenticate again.

<cfset username = "administrator">
<cfset password = toBase64('password')>

<cfsavecontent variable="xml">
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<SOAP-ENV:Body>
<m:authenticate xmlns:m="http://adobe.com/idp/services">
<m:username><cfoutput>#username#</cfoutput></m:username>
<m:password><cfoutput>#password#</cfoutput></m:password>
</m:authenticate>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
</cfsavecontent>

<cfhttp url="http://servername:portnumber/soap/services/AuthenticationManagerService?wsdl" method="post">
<cfhttpparam type="cgi" name="SOAPAction" value="authenticate">
<cfhttpparam type="xml" name="authenticateRequest" value="#xml#">
</cfhttp>

<cfset xml = xmlParse(cfhttp.filecontent)>
<cfset assertion = xmlSearch(xml, "//*[local-name()='assertion']")>
<cfoutput>#htmleditformat(assertion[1].xmltext)#</cfoutput>

Authentication with Flex Remoting in Workspace

2009-01-09T19:38:00.004-05:00

If you're getting the following error, it probably means that you have a RemoteObject call within your flex application that's loaded up as a workspace task (process / form / etc). You won't see this error if you're using the same credentials to log into workspace as what you're using for your remoting call, but it'll pop up if you try to log into workspace with another random user.

That being said, you should not authenticate your endpoints in flex and simply ensure that all users who need access to your workspace task have both "Services User" and "LiveCycle Workspace User" roles assigned to them.

fault = (mx.rpc::Fault)#2
errorID = 0
faultCode = "Channel.Authentication.Error"
faultDetail = "Cannot re-authenticate in the same session."
faultString = "warn"
message = "faultCode:Channel.Authentication.Error faultString:'warn' faultDetail:'Cannot re-authenticate in the same session.'"
name = "Error"
rootCause = (mx.messaging.messages::ErrorMessage)#3

Configuring a livecycle workspace process / task for all users

2009-01-08T17:25:00.003-05:00

We created a flex application that we in turn wanted to load up within the Adobe Livecycle Workspace ES (8.2). When originally deployed, only the super administrator was able to view it, but no other workspace enabled users. Here are the steps to configure your task properly.

Log into the Adobe LiveCycle Administration Console
Click on Services
Click on Applications and Services
Click on Service Management
Find and click on your applicable service
Click the security tab
Click on "Add Principal"
Click on "All Principals", or the user(s) / group(s) in question
Select the "INVOKE_PERM" permission
Make sure to save your changes

If the user in question can't login to workspace at all, make sure they have the "LiveCycle Workspace User" role assigned to them.

Flex DocumentReference and LiveCycle 8.2

2008-12-10T09:24:00.002-05:00

If you plan to use a DocumentReference to send a file to LiveCycle, such as an xml file, you need to ensure that you're using the latest adobe-remoting-provider.swc found xxx\LiveCycle8.2\LiveCycle_ES_SDK\misc\DataServices\Client-Libraries.

Previous versions of the DocumentReference allow for xml, but with 8.2, you need to send your document within the text property.

Look at "LCDS-325" at http://help.adobe.com/en_US/livecycle/8.2/lcds_releasenotes.html if you want more details or plan to fix this change on the LiveCycle side, but at the end of the day, it's easier to simply update your swc and text property.

Get current user for a workspace enabled flex application

2008-12-10T09:00:00.003-05:00

Here is a sample code snippet if you have to pull user information or user credentials from the signed-in workspace user when a flex application is loaded as a process/form in workspace.

import lc.core.ISessionManager;
import lc.domain.SessionMap;
import mx.utils.ObjectUtil;

var session : SessionMap = SessionMap( Application.application.session );
var sessionManager : ISessionManager = ISessionManager( session.getObject( "lc.core.ISessionManager" ) );

trace( ObjectUtil.toString( sessionManager.authenticatedUser ) );

You'll see that authenticated user is mapped to lc.domain.User. You'll need the latest fds.swk and fds_rb.swc for this. Below is an example of what you'll get back.

(lc.domain::User)#0
address = (null)
description = (null)
displayName = "Super Administrator"
domain = (null)
email = ""
emailAliases = (null)
firstName = (null)
groups = (null)
initials = (null)
isOutOfOffice = false
lastName = (null)
locale = (null)
oid = "8D1446F6-A3DD-F4C2-378B-1B46089140AA"
session = (null)
telephone = ""
timezone = (null)
userid = "administrator"

MySQL Configuration with Adobe LiveCycle ES Turnkey

2008-11-11T13:57:00.002-05:00

I just did a fresh install of the Adobe LiveCycle ES Update 1 Turnkey (8.2) and ran into an issue when trying to connect to the MySQL instance it installs using the basic MySQL GUI tools. If you receive "either the server service or the configuration file could not be found. startup variables and service section are therefore disabled" when opening the MySQL GUI Administrator tools, then check out the following steps:

Backup C:\Adobe\LiveCycle8.2\mysql\my.ini
Launch the MySQL Administrator
When prompted to sign in, hold the Ctrl key and click the "Skip" button that appears
Click on Startup Variables, and hit "Choose Option File" at the bottom and select C:\Adobe\LiveCycle8.2\mysql\my.ini
Then go back to the Server Control and make sure that "Config Filename" is correct under the "Configure Service" tab.

You should then be able to stop and start the services and connect with the correct password. You can normally pull your username password from C:\Adobe\LiveCycle8.2\jboss\server\all\deploy\adobe_ds.xml if you're not sure what it is after going through the generic install.

This however doesn't solve all my issues, as my "default" account doesn't have the same privileges as say the root account would, but then again, the root account doesn't seem to exist...

http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=24824

Issues with DataGrid Column Visibility

2007-03-13T04:29:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine passed along an interesting problem regarding DataGrids. They had the need to hide certain columns and then dynamically load the data. When doing this as expected, such as dataGridName.dataProvider = yourArrayName, the hidden columns would not stay hidden. The workaround to this issue is to track the visibility of each DataGridColumn, set the column to visible, and then override it with the visibility status we stored.

View the example here and download the code here.

Definately not optimal, but it works... ;-)

Form Validation

2007-03-13T03:33:00.000-04:00

Paul Rangel from Wheeler Street Design put together a simple form validator that works quite well. The only thing that you have to be aware of is the fact that you need to initialize the validators property after your form fields are added if you're using states.

Animator vs Animation

2007-03-09T13:40:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine just passed me the following YouTube video. It's a great example of someone who is extremely talented and creative with Flash. It's worth a watch.

Enjoy!