How to unlock jsps so that we can edit them in BI4

December 20, 2012 by: David Lai

I’d like to present a neat little trick to unlocking the jsps in BI4.

By default if we try to edit any of the jsps (ie: login.jsp from BI Launchpad), nothing happens and we keep getting the same default page.  I think SAP does this so that people don’t go mucking around with the jsps and then harrass technical support when their application fails.

Try it out for yourself by editing the login.jsp page found in

<BOE Installation>\Tomcat6\webapps\BOE\WEB-INF\eclipse\plugins\webpath.InfoView\web

The only page that we are allowed to edit are the custom.jsp pages located in

<BOE Installation>\Tomcat6\webapps\BOE\WEB-INF\eclipse\plugins\webpath.InfoView\web

<BOE Installation>\Tomcat6\webapps\BOE\WEB-INF\eclipse\plugins\webpath.OpenDocument\web\opendoc

It’s really annoying that we can only edit 2 files, so here’s the little secret on unlocking the rest of the jsps.

Go to the directory

<BOE Installation>\Tomcat6\webapps\BOE\WEB-INF\internal

then edit the file global.properties

Now modify the precompiled.jsp.files.use line by setting it to false

precompiled.jsp.files.use=false

 

Comments

10 Responses to “How to unlock jsps so that we can edit them in BI4”
  1. Mel Waldner says:

    Hi,

    We are attempting to do exactly what you have documented with little progress. I want to modify the CleanRedirect.jsp file to include domain relaxation to solve a problem with running certain types of content inside a frameset in BI4. What we have done is:

    1. Took a copy of the CleanRedirect.jsp file from the server and made the modification.

    2. Put the modified file into the folder:

    D:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\Tomcat6\webapps\BOE\WEB-INF\eclipse\plugins\webpath.PlatformServices\web\jsp\Hyperlink_View

    3. Shutdown the Tomcat server and seleted the entire LOCALHOST directory.

    4. Restarted Tomcat.

    5. Checked the contents of the file in the directory:

    D:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\Tomcat\work\Catalina\localhost\BOE\eclipse\plugins\webpath.PlatformServices\web\jsp\Hyperlink_View

    The file in that directory is the updated file.

    6. Made the change noted in your post and restarted the Tomcat server.

    7. Using HTTP Watch traced a call which included the call to CleanRedirect.jsp. The contents showed in HTTP Watch were the unaltered file.

    Is there anything obvious that we have missed in this process?

    Thanks in advance for any feedback you could provide!!

    Mel

  2. Glenn says:

    Hi David
    I have successfully used your little ‘workaround’ since moving from 3.1 to 4.1, over a year ago. We have applied 4.1SP7 in our test environment to fix another issue. Since then, if we set precompiled.jsp.files.use=false, so that we can still use our modified logon.jsp page, we get a “HTTP Status 500 – org.apache.jasper.JasperException: java.lang.ClassCastException” error when trying to open the CMC (the BI portal and modified logon.jsp works fine). I wonder if you have come across this at all and, if so, if you have a fix?

    • calvin says:

      We have a very similar issue – I checked and it seems that even if the only thing you change is the recompiled switch it causes the CMC app to fail like this, our customisation still works (unchanged from sp6) but it looks like the CMC app isnt applying this switch in this service pack

      • Emmanuel says:

        Hello Calvin,

        We have same problem, did you find a solution?

        SSO was working in BI 4.1 SP3 Patch 3 with precompiled.jsp.files.use=false.
        After upgrade to BI 4.1 SP7 Patch 3, that configuration make CMC no more working.
        We have to set back precompiled.jsp.files.use=true and it makes SSO no more working.

        Thank you

  3. Alyx Vance says:

    Same for us in BI 4.1 SP7.
    CMC returns HTTP Status 500 – org.apache.jasper.JasperException: java.lang.ClassCastException: org.apache.xerces.jaxp.DocumentBuilderFactoryImpl cannot be cast to javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory

    while BI-Launchpad is displayed fine.

    • Emmanuel says:

      Hello Alyx,

      We have same problem, did you find a solution?

      SSO was working in BI 4.1 SP3 Patch 3 with precompiled.jsp.files.use=false.
      After upgrade to BI 4.1 SP7 Patch 3, that configuration make CMC no more working.
      We have to set back precompiled.jsp.files.use=true and it makes SSO no more working.

      Thank you

  4. Muhammad Patel says:

    I am trying to customize the opendocument error message. I able to successfully make the change however i want to add a hyperlink to that message. when i run wdeploy the message appears but url shows as text rather than a hyperlink.

    Any help will be appreciated.

  5. Scott Frank says:

    Hi, I have had success with setting this to precompiled.jsp.files.use=false in Tomcat. We are using a Websphere environment for the deployment though.

    Does anyone know how to make a similar change with a Websphere deployment?

    Thank you

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