• Post category:BI Publisher
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  • Post last modified:July 1, 2020
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You are currently viewing Test/Preview/Troubleshoot eText templates
Test/Preview/Troubleshoot eText templates

In this article we will look into how to test the eText template to see if the template is working correctly and generating output as desired or not.

Normally for RTF and Excel templates, we will import the sample XML file into the template and when we click the preview button we will get the output and we can check if the output is coming up correctly or not.

However for eText template we cannot test it that way as preview option doesn’t work for these kind of templates.

If you are new to eText template, please go through the previous post to get the basics of it.

As part of the BI Publisher installation, it also installs Template Viewer which we are going to use to test/preview the etext template output.

From the Windows Start menu > click on All Programs > Oracle BI Publisher Desktop > Template Viewer
If you are unable to get it, here is the path of the file: C:\Program Files (x86)\Oracle\BI Publisher\BI Publisher Desktop\TemplateViewer\tmplviewer.jar

etext2 1 - Test/Preview/Troubleshoot eText templates

Open the tmplviewer.jar file.

We have to download the Sample XML from Data Model by writing SQL Query.

Below is the sample XML file:

xml1 1 - Test/Preview/Troubleshoot eText templates

Sample eText template created for this is like below:

etext3 1 - Test/Preview/Troubleshoot eText templates

Now, we will try to preview the xml file on this template to get the output.

Both the XML file and eText template should be placed in a single folder.

etext4 - Test/Preview/Troubleshoot eText templates

Click on browse button and navigate to the folder which has both xml and etext templates and click ok.

XML files will show up on the left panel and templates will show up on the right panel. Even though we call it eText template, it will be saved as .rtf only. Now highlight/select the xml file from left panel and highlight/select the template from right panel and change the output format to eText, then the start processing button will be enabled. If at all it is not enabled, please select the xml file and template again.

Click on Start Processing.

It will complete processing and open up the output file.

output - Test/Preview/Troubleshoot eText templates

We can also check the processing details on the template viewer

output2 - Test/Preview/Troubleshoot eText templates

Even if there are any errors with the etext template, the output will still get generated. If you get any ?????? (question mark) symbols in the output, then there is some issue with the template and you need to revisit the template and fix the issue. In the processing section it will show some error related to the template.

Another way to debug the issues with etext template would be to enable Log (debug) Level to “STATEMENT (Maximum Log)” and then click Start Processing again. It will show up detailed logs in the template viewer. We need to copy the log to text file and check where it is throwing an error.

debug1 - Test/Preview/Troubleshoot eText templates

References: Oracle Documentation

Hope this article has provided you with the steps to test the etext template and debug the template when you have issues.

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