Auto-create .pdf 2

[link9]

Hello everyone --

Does anyone have experience creating .pdf files on the fly?

I have a request from a client to provide a magic button. This button would take a currently displayed webpage, and create a printable/downloadable/saveable .pdf.

Sort of like a "Click here for printable version", which would take the current page, make a .pdf, and then allow them to save that to their computer.

Can anyone shed any light on this subject for me? I have a licensed version of Adobe Acrobat Writer, and that came with an SDK, which I assume would need to be used to facilitate this method, but I'm unsure of where to start with it, and am looking for some general 50,000 feet advice here.

thx!
paul

 

[Deadline]

Hi Paul,
Yes. I have a similar need. I filed my Tax-returns at

http://www.taxactonline.com

There, after I filled all those forms, they asked me to click a link for downloading the PDF form 8453 OL.
Bingo, it was already populated with all those information I provided.

I guess your requirement is something similar too. Thank you,
RR.
__________________________________
The best is yet to come.

 

[derren]

Paul,

Where to start...

The general principle is that you need to have control over the server which is running the web pages. In order to instigate the creation of the PDF you need to be able to invoke the printing of whichever file you wish to create to either the PDF writer or simply to file and create a postscript file. If you have distiller set up with watched folders it will automatically create the pdf into the "out" folder, and as you chose the original name for the ps file, the pdf file and path will also be known, so you can serve up a link to it in your web site.

So all (ALL!?!) you then need to do is to find a way to print based on input from the end user. This may take the form of some OLE automation using VBScript.

However, this is an intensive process, and if you manage to persuade someone to let you do this on a shared server you won't be popular!

If you are doing this on your network it won't be as bad.

Good luck and I hope that I have at least pointed you in the right direction!

Deadline,

I think your needs are slightly different. What you are seeing there is all your data inserted into a PDF form probably from a database. This is a reasonable thing to do, but it requires knowledge of some form of web programming such as ASP and VBScript and the FDF toolkit from Adobe.

Derren
[The only person in the world to like Word]

 

[Deadline]

Hi Derren,

Thank you for responding. I am ok with ASP/VBScript, which is my bread and butter at the moment.

I'm not sure about FDF toolkit though. If you mean PDF toolkit, yes I have it.

If you could provide/point to a resource that discusses how to do it, it would be a great help. Thank you,
RR.
__________________________________
The best is yet to come.

 

[Jusfire]

You may want to check out adobe's developer knowledgebase at support.adobe.com

 

[derren]

Hi

Get yourself over to

http://www.planetpdf.com

They have tutorials and examples and a great forum, with a top bloke running it called aandi

Look for fdfgateway

Good luck

Derren
[The only person in the world to like Word]

 

[link9]

Thanks, Derren.

Well, luckily, we are on a dedicated hosting plan in a data center with our own two servers, so no one (except me) is going to get irritated at processor usage for file creation. ;-)

I went to planetpdf, have downloaded ActivePDF Server & ActivePDFWebGrabber, and from what it looks like, these two products combined will give me just what I need.

Any experience with these two components, or do you use one that you particularly like/dislike that you might recommend or not?

Thanks for any additional advice.
paul

 

[derren]

Sorry, my speciality is in FDF, but I can vouch for the functionality and ease of use of all of the acrobat activeX components.

Good luck and don't forget the planetPDF forum! Derren
[The only person in the world to like Word]

 

[link9]

Ok. ActivePDF is a no-go. It won't size my images when they are sized dynamically by the ASP page (for dynamic graphs), which is pretty much the whole point of this exercise.

See... here's what's killing me. In the browser is sitting perfectly formed HTML syntax that I could (in theory) just snap up and paste into a .pdf file. I mean... when an ASP page is done rendering, it's just pure HTML.

Let's say for a moment that I had a way to grab the text/html from the client (I know how to get it onto the clipboard). If I could do that, is there some way I could get that into a pdf document, and have it render the document?

I'm just shooting in the dark here, but I'm having some real trouble doing what seems like should be a very simple task.

Any more advice greatly welcomed.

thx-
paul

 

[derren]

Hi Paul

You really are up against it here! Is still have a couple of options left though... There is a feature in acrobat 5 which is "open web page" which will read in a webpage and create a pdf from it. However I am not sure whether the Adobe object model allows automation of this.

Another option is to look at the Crysttal repoorts from

http://www.crystaldecisions.com/products/crystalreports/

These can be setup to create downloadable versions of online reports, plus a whole lot else. They are reputed to be very good, especially with automation, so it has to be worth a look. Derren
[Mediocre talent - spread really thin]