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Hyperlinks stopped linking
NickFortune
<p><span>Hi Everyone<br><br>
I have a collection of reports that that are supposed to allow drill down into each other.<br><br>
The problem is that (for various reasons) I can't use data models here. So I have a set of queries each describing one face of the hypercube I would have created, and each query has its own graph.<br><br>
So, by way of illustration, the report starts with a bar chart showing event counts grouped by time. Clicking on a bar gives a menu of hyperlinks that allow you to either drill down time-wise and get more detail for that period, or else drill into (say) the user facet and get a chart of event counts per user from that period.<br><br>
Once you're in the user chart you can drill back to the time chart restricting events to a particular user, or drill into another dimension, like event type.<br><br>
The trouble is that the hyperlinks on some of the reports stopped working and I can't get them to work again. The reports are all more or less copies of one another, varying only in the data set driving the report and the parameter values passed over the hyperlink.<br><br>
Any ideas? I've been banging my head against this one for more than a week!</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>(also posted this in the Eclipse Birt forums - hope that's OK)</p>
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JFreeman
<p>What version of BIRT are you using?</p>
<p>What has changed since the drill though was working before and isn't now?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Determining what has changed should be the key to finding a resolution.</p>
NickFortune
<p>Using Birt Designer Pro 4.2.3, and testing using BDPro's internal server and palemoon as a client.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sadly, I don't know what actually led to the problem. I was focused on a different issue, noticed that one link had broken and flagged it up to look at it later.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The silly thing is I've done side by side comparisons between the working chart and the ones that don't work and, aside from the ordering of parameters, they seem identical.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There was even a point where if I ran a drilldown report as a top level report the links would work, but if I drilled into it then the links would be unresponsive.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>[edit]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Thinking about it...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I added another report to the folder. They're all pretty much the same report and have the same names for parameters and variables, although I tried changing that.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The other thing I did, which is likely a candidate is I moved the reports into their own sub-folder under the "Report Designs" folder. I've made sure to reselect each hyperlink target using the filer dialogue in BDPro, but there could be issues I'm unaware of I suppose.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Beyond that it really is hard to say what changed.</p>
JFreeman
<p>Are you getting any errors in the designers log when the drill through issue happens?</p>
NickFortune
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="JFreeman" data-cid="137801" data-time="1436974302">
<div>
<p>Are you getting any errors in the designers log when the drill through issue happens?</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p>Oddly enough, no. In fact if I clear the log and try the link, I don't get anything appearing in the log file. Not even debug chatter. I also tried running the eclipsec.exe version of BDPro. The broken hyperlinks don't even generate console chatter.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I get the menu of links when I click on a bar, but after that I might as well be clicking on the desktop.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I do have some javascript expressions behind the some of the parameters being passed, but so far as I can tell those aren't being called at all. (I tried calling the java logger function from one of them, but it gets called about 12 times before any link gets clicked - is it executed at parse time? Server side JS and Tomcat are new territory for me, I'm afraid).</p>
JFreeman
<p>Where exactly does the javascript sit that is used for the parameters?</p>
<p>There are places that do get called multiple times but I would need to know where to provide more specifics.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If you log out the URL that is being built for the drill-through, does it build a valid URL?</p>
<p>If you navigate to the generated URL manually what happens?</p>
NickFortune
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="JFreeman" data-cid="137838" data-time="1437082272"><p>Where exactly does the javascript sit that is used for the parameters?<br>There are places that do get called multiple times but I would need to know where to provide more specifics.</p></blockquote><br>I'm not sure how to put that into words with any more precision than I already have, so maybe some screen shots are the way forward. I'll just post the links rather than embed them because otherwise they dominate the message.<br><br><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='
http://i.imgur.com/4N8xCVv.png'>http://i.imgur.com/4N8xCVv.png</a><br><br><a
data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='
http://i.imgur.com/TD0mDRh.png'>http://i.imgur.com/TD0mDRh.png</a><br> <br><blockquote
class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="JFreeman" data-cid="137838" data-time="1437082272"><p>If you log out the URL that is being built for the drill-through, does it build a valid URL?<br>If you navigate to the generated URL manually what happens?</p></blockquote><br>OK. Umm... how do I log the URL? And where do I log it from? (Sorry to sound so clueless, but the whole Java ecosystem is well out of my normal skill set).<br><br>[edit]<br><br>I'm assuming that what's going on will be clear from the screenshots - they were one double monitor capture originally, but I cut it down for posting. Let me know if it's at all unclear and I'll see if I can add some more information.
JFreeman
<p>Thanks for the screenshots.</p>
<p>That shows me what I was looking for.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You indicated earlier that you moved the reports into their own sub folders. In the hyperlink options dialogue where you set the drill-through options, have you updated the path to the drill-through reports for any report that was moved?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Regarding the URL, it might be easiest to get it from the browser when you run the report. It should be possible to get it from the link directly by copying the URL through a right click context. Otherwise, it should also be possible to get the URL from the DOM tree using the browsers debugging tools.</p>