Deploying custom emitters to iHub and BIRT Visualization Platform
The custom emitters in BIRT are implemented as plug-ins and packaged as JAR files. To make them available to the Actuate products that support them, copy the emitters to the MyClasses folder. The MyClasses folder appears at different levels on different platforms and but it is always available at the product’s installation folder. For iHub the folder is at the following location:
<Actuate installion folder>/BIRTiHub/iHub/MyClasses/eclipse/plugins
When you install InformationConsole.war file to your own J2EE application server, the shared folder MyClasses is not available. In this case, custom emitter plug-ins should be copied to the following folder:
<context-root>/WEB-INF/platform/plugins
Plug-ins depend on other plug-ins to function properly. It is a good practice to verify all required plug-ins are installed in the system. To get the list of all required plug-ins open MANIFEST.MF file of your custom plug-in, as shown in Listing 46‑1. Depending on the way the plug-ins are developed, Import-Package or Require-Bundle entries declare plug-in dependencies on a package or bundle level.
Listing 46‑1 MANIFEST.MF
Manifest-Version: 1.0
Require-Bundle: org.eclipse.birt.core;bundle-version="3.7.0",org.eclipse.birt.report.model;bundle-version="3.7.0",org.eclipse.birt.report.e ngine;bundle-version="3.7.0",org.eclipse.birt.data;bundle-version="3.7.0"
Bundle-ActivationPolicy: lazy
Bundle-Version: 1.0.0.201110121016
Bundle-Name: BIRT CSV Emitter
Bundle-Activator: org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.emitter.csv.CsvPlugin
Bundle-ManifestVersion: 2
Import-Package: org.osgi.framework;version="1.3.0"
Bundle-SymbolicName: org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.emitter.csv;
Bundle-RequiredExecutionEnvironment: JavaSE-1.6
Every time you deploy a custom emitter you need to restart the product. This ensures the emitter JAR is added to the classpath and the product can discover the new rendering format. For iHub deployment you must execute an extra step to register the emitter with iHub.
The following tools and products support custom emitters:
*BIRT Designer Professional
*Actuate BIRT Studio
*BIRT Interactive Viewer for iHub
*BIRT Visualization Platform for iHub
*iHub