Making a Request to PTC Arbortext Publishing Engine

Requests are made to PTC Arbortext Publishing Engine (PE) using the HTTP protocol. The most basic request for PTC Arbortext Layout Developer— Enterprise users migrating to PE is of the form shown in this simple example:

http://localhost:8080/e3/servlet/e3?f=app&file=F:/myJobFile.xml

Note these parts of the request URL:

• localhost:8080 — the URL and port number of the PE server

Specify the location and port of your server. In this example, the server is on the local machine.

• f=app — specific request to PE to use the method that passes the file directly to the ALD engine

• file=F:/myJobFile.xml — the required activation file

The activation file name pattern must be declared in the e3config.xml file. For more information, see Setting up PTC Arbortext Publishing Engine.

The content of the activation file must comply with the structure described in PTC ALD Activation File.

This URL will make a request to the PE Request Manager to process the file specified.

For more information, see Web Clients and the HTTP Protocol in the Programmer's Guide to PTC Arbortext Publishing Engine.

You can include parameters that will run requests from a queue:

• queue=yes — tells PE to put the request into a queue rather than waiting for a response

• queue-priority=1 — gives the request a priority value within the queue

The parameter accepts values from 1 to 5. 1 is the highest priority.

If you are running requests from a queue, you can monitor them using pages linked from the PE Index Page. This page can be opened in two ways:

• From the PTC Arbortext Publishing Engine Configuration Program — launched with [install]/e3/bin/e3config.exe

Choose the Launch PE Index Page option in the Tomcat tab.

• By pointing a browser to the e3 folder of the PE server

For example, use the URL http://localhost:8080/e3/

Navigate to the queue to view a list of the queued transactions and options for managing them.

There are some other request parameters that you can use to customize your automated publishing process:

• destroy-after-use=no — tells the Request Manager not to recycle the PE sub-process after the job

By default, the sub-process is recycled to avoid any variable contamination and to invoke a new ALD session.

For more information about creating your custom publishing process with PE, see the Programmer's Guide to PTC Arbortext Publishing Engine.