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javascriptjavamicrostrategy

Obtain from microstrategy an exported PDF document directly

This is my situation: I have a third part that uses a software called microstrategy which is able to generate documents and allow to export them as PDF or Excel files. They provide me only web api of this product, and I haven't any web service to work with.

The url is like:

http://<third_part_domain>/microstrategy/asp/Main.aspx?Server=<third_part_domain>&Project=<project_name>&evt=3069&src=Main.aspx.3069&executionMode=3&promptAnswerMode=1&documentID=<doc_id>&uid=<username>&pwd=<password>&<other_parameters_for_request>

I have try to obtain the file (that I must save on server side) by java code, but the response of the link that we use is an HTML page with some code Javascript that does more than one redirect, so I can not interpreted correctly the response and I should use a browser to obtain the PDF.

So I have thought to put the page into a iframe and after a while (usually the server takes 20 second) take the PDF object by javascript code and send to my server. But obviously the third part have another domain and the CORS policies block everything. To make matters worse, I can not use the final url to obtain the file because the microstrategy respond me with an internal page of the administration console.

So, that's my question:

Is there a way (that is not on the microstrategy server side) to obtain directly the PDF from microstrategy?

Or exists a way from client side to bypass the problem of origin control? I have evaluated to implement a proxy for solution but it's too expensive.

Thanks to all!

Solution

  • You need two things in order to download a PDF from MicroStrategy using a URL:

    1. In the document property set that default visualization as PDF. This is pretty trivial and I think any of your MicroStrategy savvy colleague can help you with this.

    2. Disable the waiting page, this is more complicated. When MicroStrategy generates a documents, usually it needs some time, meanwhile the server is working it will show you a waiting page. Useful if the request comes from a human (the human can go on StackOverflow), not that much if the call arrives from API.

    The instruction to disable the waiting page are here: TN34124: How to Disable the Wait Page in MicroStrategy Web using the MicroStrategy Web SDK 9.x.

    But I read from your question that you have no control on the third party MicroStrategy application. In that case there is little you can do. You can try to ask them to implement the customization to remove the waiting page or allow you to use taskproc API, but that's a story for another day.