Job XML

The Job XML format for PrintFactory is very specific. It’s also case sensitive. As you can imagine, this means it’s essential to follow the syntax we’re describing here precisely when you’re submitting jobs.

Measurements

We use a common internal measurement standard across all processes. When you’re specifying measurements in XML it’s important to use this format:

1″ is 18 units in PrintFactory, 1 unit equals 1/18″. So the value for 1″ is 18.  And 1/18″ can be expressed as 0.055555.  For rounding accuracy, we work to 5 decimal places.

 

Job Ticket

The PrintFactory job ticket should use version 1.0 XML schema

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″ ?>

The ticket should start and end with a Job tag and contain the following items at least:

<Job>
   <GUID>96f8ada6-0a69-48a3-9599-012b5634087d</GUID>
   <Name>Multicopy Example</Name>
   <User>MultiCopy Test</User> 
   <JobType>Regular</JobType> 
   <Print>true</Print> 
   <PDFJob> 
      <InputJobs> 
         <FilePath Copies="2">/Files/castle_api.pdf</FilePath> 
         <FilePath Copies="3">/Files/G180770.pdf</FilePath> 
      </InputJobs> 
      <IsTemporary>false</IsTemporary> 
   </PDFJob> 
</Job>

‘Copies’ is optional, but everything else is essential.

GUID must be unique and in the valid format – an example can be found here.

The file path must be valid and accessible to the RIP without further authentication.

 

Job Submission

There are several ways to submit a job to the PrintFactory workflow:

Hotfolder

This is the most basic way of submitting jobs.

Just dropping a job ticket into the hotfolder of a Printer Queue will enable the RIP to process those jobs sequentially through the queue.  Any custom settings applied to the job ticket will overrule the queue settings.

Uploader

The Uploader can be used to submit jobs to the PrintFactory Cloud.  There are various ways to submit:

• Drag and drop files directly to the uploader
• Drag and drop XML job ticket to the uploader (useful for testing)
• Create a hotfolder to submit job tickets directly from an MIS
• You can also choose to submit the jobs + XML via the cloud or just the XML.

More info about the Uploader can be found here.

Cloud API

Jobs can also be submitted directly to the Cloud API.

Dynamic nesting needs three things before it can process jobs using this method:

• Thumbnail – to show the thumbnail of the job in the UI a thumbnail must be uploaded – you can see the format of this post here.
• Valid Job Ticket – The format of a job ticket and submission method is shown here.
• Job Dimensions in PrintFactory format.

Single Page

<SrcPageWidth>225</SrcPageWidth>
<SrcPageHeight>162.5</SrcPageHeight>

Scaling

<Scale X=“0.822365” Y=“0.822365" />

Multipage documents:

<Part>
   <GUID>96f8ada6-0a69-48a3-9599-012b3422087d</GUID>
   <DocumentGUID>fb5e35a7-66f1-46a8-bac4-5d91943cda2e</DocumentGUID>
   <SourcePage>0</SourcePage>
   <DestinationPage>1</DestinationPage>
   <Side>A</Side>
   <SrcPageWidth>225</SrcPageWidth>
   <SrcPageHeight>162.5</SrcPageHeight>
</Part>

A good way to verify what you’re doing is to submit a job manually through the RIP and check the resulting settings.xml in the PrintFactory/Work folder. This contains all job processing info and parts can be reused in the submission process.

A full list of XML job tags can be found here:

Job XML Definition