Apache FOP the method newInstance(FopFactoryConfig) in the type FopFactory is not applicable for the arguments ()

Question

I am getting the following error:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.Error: Unresolved compilation problem:     The method newInstance(FopFactoryConfig) in the type FopFactory is not applicable for the arguments ()

    at fopdemo.fopvass.PDFHandler.createPDFFile(PDFHandler.java:42)
    at fopdemo.fopvass.TestPDF.main(TestPDF.java:40)

This is my code:

package fopdemo.fopvass;

import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.net.URL;

import javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext;
import javax.xml.bind.JAXBException;
import javax.xml.bind.Marshaller;
import javax.xml.transform.Result;
import javax.xml.transform.Source;
import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerConfigurationException;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerException;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactoryConfigurationError;
import javax.xml.transform.dom.DOMResult;
import javax.xml.transform.dom.DOMSource;
import javax.xml.transform.sax.SAXResult;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;

import org.apache.fop.apps.FOPException;
import org.apache.fop.apps.FOUserAgent;
import org.apache.fop.apps.Fop;
import org.apache.fop.apps.FopFactory;
import org.apache.fop.apps.MimeConstants;

public class PDFHandler {
    public static final String EXTENSION = ".pdf";
    public String PRESCRIPTION_URL = "template.xsl";

    public String createPDFFile(ByteArrayOutputStream xmlSource, String templateFilePath) throws IOException {
        File file = File.createTempFile("" + System.currentTimeMillis(), EXTENSION);
        URL url = new File(templateFilePath + PRESCRIPTION_URL).toURI().toURL();
        // creation of transform source
        StreamSource transformSource = new StreamSource(url.openStream());
        // create an instance of fop factory
        FopFactory fopFactory = FopFactory.newInstance();
        // a user agent is needed for transformation
        FOUserAgent foUserAgent = fopFactory.newFOUserAgent();
        // to store output
        ByteArrayOutputStream pdfoutStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        StreamSource source = new StreamSource(new ByteArrayInputStream(xmlSource.toByteArray()));
        Transformer xslfoTransformer;
        try {
            TransformerFactory transfact = TransformerFactory.newInstance();

            xslfoTransformer = transfact.newTransformer(transformSource);
            // Construct fop with desired output format
            Fop fop;
            try {
                fop = fopFactory.newFop(MimeConstants.MIME_PDF, foUserAgent, pdfoutStream);
                // Resulting SAX events (the generated FO)
                // must be piped through to FOP
                Result res = new SAXResult(fop.getDefaultHandler());

                // Start XSLT transformation and FOP processing
                try {
                    // everything will happen here..
                    xslfoTransformer.transform(source, res);

                    // if you want to save PDF file use the following code
                    OutputStream out = new java.io.FileOutputStream(file);
                    out = new java.io.BufferedOutputStream(out);
                    FileOutputStream str = new FileOutputStream(file);
                    str.write(pdfoutStream.toByteArray());
                    str.close();
                    out.close();

                } catch (TransformerException e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            } catch (FOPException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        } catch (TransformerConfigurationException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (TransformerFactoryConfigurationError e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return file.getPath();
    }

    public ByteArrayOutputStream getXMLSource(EmployeeData data) throws Exception {
        JAXBContext context;

        ByteArrayOutputStream outStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

        try {
            context = JAXBContext.newInstance(EmployeeData.class);
            Marshaller m = context.createMarshaller();
            m.setProperty(Marshaller.JAXB_FORMATTED_OUTPUT, Boolean.TRUE);
            m.marshal(data, System.out);
            m.marshal(data, outStream);
        } catch (JAXBException e) {

            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return outStream;

    }
}

This is where it is called:

package fopdemo.fopvass;

import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.util.ArrayList;
/**
 * @author Debasmita.Sahoo
 *
 */
public class TestPDF {
    public static void main(String args[]){
        System.out.println("Hi Testing");
        ArrayList employeeList = new ArrayList();
        String templateFilePath ="C:/Paula/Proyectos/fop/fopvass/resources/";

        Employee e1= new Employee();
        e1.setName("Debasmita1 Sahoo");
        e1.setEmployeeId("10001");
        e1.setAddress("Pune");
        employeeList.add(e1);

        Employee e2= new Employee();
        e2.setName("Debasmita2 Sahoo");
        e2.setEmployeeId("10002");
        e2.setAddress("Test");
        employeeList.add(e2);

        Employee e3= new Employee();
        e3.setName("Debasmita3 Sahoo");
        e3.setEmployeeId("10003");
        e3.setAddress("Mumbai");
        employeeList.add(e3);

        EmployeeData data = new EmployeeData();
        data.setEemployeeList(employeeList);
        PDFHandler handler = new PDFHandler();

        try {
            ByteArrayOutputStream streamSource = handler.getXMLSource(data);

            handler.createPDFFile(streamSource,templateFilePath);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

The following line won't compile:

FopFactory fopFactory = FopFactory.newInstance();

The method newInstance() requires a parameter. From the documentation (provided by Mathias Muller), under 'Basic Usage', that parameter refers to a configuration file:

FopFactory fopFactory = FopFactory.newInstance(
  new File( "C:/Temp/fop.xconf" ) );

You need to provide it a File object. Alternatively, it is also possible to create a FopFactory instance by providing a URI to resolve relative URIs in the input file (because SVG files reference other SVG files). As the documentation suggests:

FopFactory fopFactory = FopFactory.newInstance(
  new File(".").toURI() );

The user agent is the entity that allows you to interact with a single rendering run, i.e. the processing of a single document. If you wish to customize the user agent's behaviour, the first step is to create your own instance of FOUserAgent using the appropriate factory method on FopFactory and pass that to the factory method that will create a new Fop instance.