<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE concept PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Concept//EN" "concept.dtd">

<concept id="API">

<title>Using the Java API</title>

<shortdesc>DITA Open Toolkit includes a Java Application Programming Interface to allow developers to embed the

toolkit more easily into other Java programs.</shortdesc>

<prolog>

<metadata>

<keywords>

<indexterm>Java

<indexterm>API</indexterm></indexterm>

<indexterm>API</indexterm>

<indexterm><cmdname>dita</cmdname> command

<indexterm>classpath</indexterm></indexterm>

<indexterm>Java

<indexterm>classpath</indexterm></indexterm>

<indexterm>classpath

<indexterm>Java</indexterm>

<indexterm><cmdname>dita</cmdname> command</indexterm></indexterm>

</keywords>

</metadata>

</prolog>

<conbody>

<p>When using the API, programmers don’t need to know or care that DITA-OT uses Ant, they can just use Java. </p>

<note>When running DITA-OT via the <cmdname>dita</cmdname> command, an <codeph>ant</codeph> shell script handles the

classpath setup, but when using the API the classpath should be set up as part of the normal classpath

configuration for the Java application.</note>

<example>

<title>Example usage</title>

<codeblock

outputclass="language-java normalize-space show-line-numbers show-whitespace"

>// Create a reusable processor factory with DITA-OT base directory

ProcessorFactory pf = ProcessorFactory.newInstance(ditaDir);

// and set the temporary directory

pf.setBaseTempDir(tempDir);

// Create a processor using the factory and configure the processor

Processor p = pf.newProcessor("html5")

.setInput(mapFile)

.setOutputDir(outDir)

.setProperty("nav-toc", "partial");

// Run conversion

p.run();</codeblock>

</example>

<section>

<indexterm>debugging

<indexterm>logging</indexterm></indexterm>

<p>By default, running DITA-OT via the API will write a debug log to the temporary directory. A custom SLF4J

logger can also be used to access the log via the Simple Logging Facade for Java.</p>

<p>The processor cleans the temporary directory by default, but this can be disabled to simplify debugging in

cases where the processor failed.</p>

<note type="tip">See the <cite>DITA-OT Java API documentation</cite> in the <filepath>doc/api/</filepath> folder

of the DITA-OT distribution package for information on the packages, classes, interfaces and methods provided by

the Java API.</note>

</section>

<section>

<title>Downloading DITA-OT from Maven Central</title>

<indexterm>Maven Central</indexterm>

<p>As of version 2.5, the DITA Open Toolkit base library (<filepath>dost.jar</filepath>) is available via the

Maven 2 Central Repository. You can use this mechanism to download the main JAR file and include it in the build

for other Java projects.</p>

<p>To locate the latest version,

<xref

href="https://search.maven.org/#search%7Cga%7C1%7Cg%3A%22org.dita-ot%22"

format="html"

scope="external"

>search for the <codeph>org.dita-ot</codeph> group ID</xref>.</p>

<note type="important">The <filepath>dost.jar</filepath> file provides only the DITA Open Toolkit base library. It

does <b>not</b> contain the full DITA-OT distribution and cannot be used to run DITA-OT by itself. You will need

to ensure that your build installs the other files and directories required for the toolkit along with the

dependencies for your project.</note>

</section>

</conbody>

</concept>