Creating Job Ticket variables

Job Ticket variables are defined from an XML/JDF job ticket file. These files may vary based on the source of the job ticket. A sample XML/JDF job ticket file is needed to easily locate the appropriate data needed for the variable.

Note: The XML/JDF job tickets are required to be submitted to the PitStop Server Hotfolder as the corresponding PDF file, if a match between a PDF file and it’s corresponding job ticket cannot be made within the user specified timeout value, the individual PDF or XML will error and be rejected to defined error folder.

To define a Job Ticket variable, add a new variable and define it’s Type as Job Ticket and the correct corresponding value type. There are four value types you can choose from,

Number
Length
Text
Boolean

When you select "Length" as the value type, an additional dropdown menu called Unit appears using which you can choose the measuring unit you want to use.

Next, for “XPath” select “Browse” to open the “Select XPath from sample file” window and select “Browse” again and locate your sample job ticket file. It can be located anywhere on your local system as only the internal XPath is required.

Once your sample job ticket is selected, all the internal data fields will be visible. Navigate through the data fields and select the correct data field needed for the check you’re creating.

Once selected, the XPath will populate at the top of the dialog and you can exit that window.

If necessary it is also possible to manually edit an XPath if you require a more advanced method to return a value from your job ticket.

Note: XPath definitions, and values obtained from an XML/JDF job ticket can be checked within the Variable Set Inspector. See “Inspect/verify variables in a Variable Set” later in this section for more information.

XPath offers a number of functions to perform additional operations on location paths, for example: count() to return the number of times a certain node is present or to count the number of nodes under the color nodes in order to know the number of separations, sum(), ceiling(), floor(), string-length() and so on.