Hi iNug rebells, ;-) It’s time for some content/questions/tipps/voodoo/ etc.
Background: I have to deal with lots of invoices from multiple vendors coming in every day. Most of those invoices have only one invoice line on that A4 paper. Fortunately the invoices arrive also as PDF-attachments to emails from the vendors. The task is to eliminate the need for the administration staff to physically touch the paper invoices delivered with the goods. So far so good. There are two options to convert pdf to text, the PlugIn from Pluggers and the open source alternative “xpdf tools / xpdfReader” from https://www.xpdfreader.com/download.html <https://www.xpdfreader.com/download.html>. xpdf-tools/XpdfReader was suggested by Wolfgang Kunkel (if you come across that 4D-Partner, please thank him) that there could be problems running it in 4d-Server on macOS. After some testing I decided to go with the OpenSource-alternative to be called by LEP. I placed the xpdf-tools in the Resouces-folder of the 4D-database-Packadge-Hirachy as followed: Resources xpdftools Linux // you never know what positive feature could come... :o) bin32 bin64 Mac bin64 pdfdetach pdffonts pdfimages pdfinfo pdftohtml pdftopng pdftoppm pdftops pdftotext Windows bin32 bin64 man_pages // documentation Unix-style What can I say - it works like a charm as long as one compensates for non disclosed 4D-conditions… 1. On macOS all path to documents/folders have to be converted to POSIX-Format! 2. All paths in the LEP calls on macOS AND Windows should be encapsulated by CHAR(Double Quote)/Char(34) to give the underlaying OS a chance to interpret it the right way. 3. During my tests I was reminded to declare variables under ALL circumstances, especially when running 4D on Windows. Code Sample: Case of : (Is macOS) $pathToCommand:=Convert path system to POSIX($pathToCommand) $PathToSourceFile:=Document+Char(34) $PathToSourceFile:=Convert path system to POSIX($PathToSourceFile) $PathToSourceFile:=Char(34)+$PathToSourceFile+Char(34)+"-" // compensate for spaces in the file/path name. : (Is Windows) $PathToSourceFile:=Char(Double quote)+Document+Char(Double quote)+" -" //: (Is Linux) Else // Fuck up End case $CallLEP:=$pathToCommand+$PathToSourceFile LAUNCH EXTERNAL PROCESS($CallLEP;$InputStream;$stdout;$ErrorStream;$ExPID) Oha, the most important thing is to get the converted pdf-file into “$stdout”… well read the man-page and forget the “ ‘ “ at the right point. The XpdfRead.dbase will be dropped in a DropBox upon request - to be used at your own risk! :o))))) And tomorrow I try to convince you to share some wisdom in regards to “How to mess around in/with/etc. text” Cheers Jörg, Good night and good luck! - Thursday already… ********************************************************************** 4D Internet Users Group (4D iNUG) New Forum: https://discuss.4D.com Archive: http://lists.4d.com/archives.html Options: https://lists.4d.com/mailman/options/4d_tech Unsub: mailto:4d_tech-unsubscr...@lists.4d.com **********************************************************************
