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Use DPF for File Format Conversion

Requirememt

Digital Process Factory (DPF) as of version 3.0.0 or higher

Introduction

To print files for which there are no built-in converters, PLOSSYS Output Engine can make use of DPF for the input conversion of these file formats.

The standard preconversion flow allows for converting Microsoft Office, PNG and JPEG.

Various custom conversions can be achieved by integrating DPF conversion into a custom flow:

if (job.properties.current.someSpecialKey === ('some special value')) {
  await convert(job, { service: 'convert-dpf', convertParams: { dpfWorkflow: 'DPF4Convert.net_convert', dpfParameter: { someDpfKey: 'some value' } } });
}

For more information on how to implement custom flows, refer to Customize Job Processing on Windows or Customize Job Processing on Linux.

Configuration

To integrate Digital Process Factory into the PLOSSYS preconversion set the following environment variables as needed:

  • DPF_URL: optional, link to the job REST API of the DPF server, default: https://localhost:9126/rest/dpf
  • DPF_API_VERSION: optional, version of the job REST API provided by Digital Process Factory, default: v1
  • CALLBACK_HOST: optional, hostname of PLOSSYS Output Engine reachable by Digital Process Factory to send callbacks to, default: FQDN if ascertainable otherwise the local hostname
  • CALLBACK_PORT: optional, port of PLOSSYS Output Engine reachable by Digital Process Factory to send callbacks to, default: 2129

Certificates

PLOSSYS Output Engine automatically trusts the DPF certificates. On the other hand, DPF does not trust the default certificates of PLOSSYS Output Engine because they are issued for localhost.

  1. If no custom certificates are available, follow these steps:

    • Go to the DPF environment.

    • Run gen_test_cert.pl to create a certificate for the Output Engine server. In case of a cluster, create a certificate for each server. The issuer of these certificates will be seal_test_ca.

      Hint - usage

      gen_test_crt.pl 
  [-hostname <the name of the server for which to generate the certificate>] 
  [-certbase <basename of certificate file with absolute path>]

      For example: 

      gen_test_crt.pl -hostname pls-out-ngn.customer.local -certbase .\pls-out-ngn

      The command above creates two files with names according to the certbase:

      • pls-out-ngn.crt
      • pls-out.ngn.key

  2. At the Output Engine server, copy the certificate and key file to the directory specified in TLS_EXTERNAL_DIR.

  3. Restart the seal-checkin service.

    plossys service stop seal-checkin
plossys service start seal-checkin

  4. At the DPF server, open a SEAL Shell as administrator and call import_cert_jre.pl to import the certificate to the Java keystore.

    import_cert_jre.pl 
  -crt <certificate file to import>
  [-alias <an alias to choose for the certificate in the store - default: the certificate file base name>]

    Hint - root certificate

    You can import either the root certificate or any other certificate. In case of an imported root certificate, all certificates signed with it are trusted automatically.

    The self-signed root certificate contained in the delivery of DPF is located at %PLSROOT%\server\web\apache\conf\cacert\seal_test_ca.crt.

  5. A restart of Tomcat or DPF is not neccessary.

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