Connect an Xcelsius dashboard to a public RSS feed using simple jsp proxy – work around cross domain problem

Xcelsius has several data connectivity facilities that make it relatively easy for dashboard developers to connect to live data. Web Services and RSS feeds can be used via XML maps, or directly. However, the practical limitation anyone who ever tried using those features undoubtedly runs into, is the fact that these sources will typically reside on a different server, and hence will cause a cross-domain error on the swf file deployed from Xcelsius.
To address this problem, I used a simple .jsp based proxy. Since Xcelsius developers are usually working close to a BusinessObjects implementation, and that in turn, is typically deployed on a J2EE server (usually Tomcat), a .jsp solution seemed appropriate and applicable to many folks. All this proxy does is connect to the RSS (can be adjusted to connect to a Web Service) , and then re-stream it. That way, rather than connecting the swf to some remote server, it can be connected to a local file, hence eliminating the cross-domain problem. In the XLF connection, rather than using the actual URL, I am using the proxy URL (http://localhost:8080/proxy.jsp?proxyUrl=http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/series/24hoursinpictures/rss – be sure to replace localhost with your server name).
To illustrate this solution, I created an Xcelsius based swf that goes out to the Guardian UK 24 Hours In Pictures RSS feed (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/series/24hoursinpictures/rss), and displays the images, and other info about them.
You can find the XLF, proxy.jsp file and related html/swf here. After downloading, extract the .zip package, and place the jsp.proxy, .html and .swf file in your web app root (for Tomcat this is in TomcatHomeDirectorywebappsROOT). You could then open a web browser on the server and load http://localhost(:8080typically)/PicOfTheDay.html
I would love to hear about others use of this concept.

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2 Responses to Connect an Xcelsius dashboard to a public RSS feed using simple jsp proxy – work around cross domain problem

  1. AJINKYA SHINDE says:

    The link for downloading the example is broken.Please update the same.

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