Also check the Allaire taggallery for query2pdf. I have used it and it works great for not already having a pdf form created.
-----Original Message-----
From: Billy Cravens [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2001 3:47 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Creating PDF's
ActivePDF is fairly easy to use, but far from cheap, but good performance.
HTMLDoc is a freeware EXE that can run out of process, but it has some memory
issues, so you'd be best to write some sort of a wrapper for it to clean up
(read: VB or VC++)
If you're looking to populate a pre-existing PDF dynamically, you can
probably use PDF forms. I've pasted an email from cf-talk (I think) that
covered this: (please pardon the messy format)
Populating PDF Forms using ColdFusion and the Adobe FDF file format.
(Max Paperno, [EMAIL PROTECTED])
The objective is to deliver an PDF form on the fly with
values pre-filled on the server side with dynamic data. I'll assume that to
get
the dynamic data, you'd execute a query, say qryGetData
as an example. The data can really be from any source. Example CFML
and FDF code is included below, while the sample PDF
file can be downloaded from
http://www.worlddesign.com/testing/myForm.pdf. You can
also run the example from
http://www.worlddesign.com/testing/returnPDF.cfm.
1) First you will need your PDF form. Create a regular
PDF document, and using the full Acrobat (not the reader) "draw" your form
fields in it. Give these form fields some meaningful
names (I like to give them the same names as my CF variables to keep things
clear).
2) For the form default values, put in CF variables! So
for example you have a field for First Name-- for it's value, in Acrobat, you
could put in #qryGetData.FirstName# (the default value
for a given field is found in it's Properties/Options dialog). Don't forget
the #
signs. You can actually use ANY CF command/function
within the field values.
3) From Acrobat, export your form definitions as an FDF
file (File/Export/Form Data...). This creates a plain text file containing
the
field definitions and the default field values (ie, all
your CF variables). Save the PDF too. The PDF will need to be accessible via
a
URL from your site, and the FDF will need to be
accessible to CF Server (as a CFINCLUDE). For the example lets call them
myForm.fdf and myForm.pdf.
4) Open up the FDF file in CF Studio (or your favorite
plain text editor). You'll need to make a few minor adjustments here. The
FDF format is very terse and is pretty easy to work
with. You don't have to understand it's structure to do any of the following.
a) Scroll down to the end and find the line that has '/F
(myForm.pdf)>>' on it. Replace the part inside the parenthesis with a full
URL which will point to the PDF template on your server.
For example, the line might read like this (w/out the quotes): '/F (
http://www.myServer.com/PDF/myForm.pdf)>>'
b) Wrap CFOUTPUT tags around the entire contents of the
FDF file.
c) If you used any CF functions within your form field
values (such as DollarFormat()) you will need to do a search/replace.
Acrobat escapes all '(' and ')' by preceding them with a
backslash (\). Replace '\(' with '(' and '\)' with ')' globally (this is very
quick).
d) Occasionally Acrobat will put a line break in the
middle of your CF variable. You can find these later during debugging,
and/or quickly eyeball the FDF file and look for line
breaks in the middle of a variable. The line break will also be escaped with
a '\'
preceding the break. Remove the line break and the \.
You can also double-check that there are no stray # signs while you're at it.
If you have a large FDF, it's easier to fix this during
debug since CF will tell you the exact line number of the error.
5) After you save the modified FDF file, you're ready
for the CF part. It's pretty simple and there are probably several ways to do
it.
Here's what I've done. You have your action template (or
whatever), say act_returnPDF.cfm. First you want to make sure that the
action which runs this template won't generate any other
content besides the PDF file (so no other headers/footers/etc). Avoid white
space too. A leading blank line or any other content in
the results will screw things up.
6) In your action template, perform your query that
returns the variable names you've used in the PDF/FDF templates, or otherwise
assign values to the variables.
7) FDF uses the parenthesis characters as delimiters
(see step 4c, above). If any of your content may have '(' or ')' in it, you
need to
escape these using '\' in front of them. See the sample
code for an example.
8) Then, you basically just CFINCLUDE the FDF file. Any
CFML and all CF variables are interpreted by CF and replaced with
data. Since you want to send the FDF file to the browser
as an FDF (not text/html), you can use CFCONTENT to return the
output. Here's an actual example (also see the sample
code below for a more complete example):
<CFHEADER NAME="Content-Disposition" VALUE="inline;
filename=myForm.fdf">
<CFCONTENT TYPE="application/vnd.fdf">
<CFINCLUDE TEMPLATE="myForm.fdf">
The CFHEADER line sets the file name that will be sent
(so IE knows it's an FDF file), while the CFCONTENT makes sure
Netscape knows what to do (since it uses the MIME type
like a good little browser should).
Note: To debug, comment out, or otherwise exclude, the
CFHEADER and CFCONTENT tags. This will allow you to see the raw
FDF file being returned, and will show any CF errors
that might be thrown. Make sure you get a "clean" FDF file being returned
before continuing. A clean FDF file will start with
'%FDF' and end with '%%EOF'.
9) Then it gets a touch complicated to follow the flow.
When the browser sees the FDF file type, it runs Acrobat (full or Reader)
which opens the FDF file and sees the /F switch and the
URL to the PDF template. Acrobat then requests the PDF file via that
URL. Once Acrobat retrieves the template PDF, it
performs the field substitutions, replacing the defined form fields in the
PDF with
the data that is specified in the FDF. The result is a
PDF file with the data dynamically populated.
The full range of options for PDF documents applies,
such as protecting from editing, selecting, printing, etc., etc.
Another cool feature of this is that you can have one
FDF file which works for any number of PDF templates. As long as the fields
are named the same across the PDFs, you can dynamically
drive the URL in the /F switch in the FDF file to point to any PDF. For
example you have the same basic form that is laid out
differently in each State. With just one FDF file you can deliver any State's
custom form using different PDF templates.
Active-X Method:
BTW, please note that there is a slightly different
method for doing this using Adobe's ActiveX FDF component. Stephen Aylor
recently posted a good description of how to do it that
way to CF-Talk [Subject: Re: follow-up question to PDF [sample ActiveX],
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 20:39:58 -0800]. As Stephen
points out in a follow-up email, this method might be preferable to the
above if your form field definitions change often, since
you can avoid mucking around in the FDF file altogether. There are probably
other methods for accomplishing the same thing, using
Adobe's FDF tools <
http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/acrosdk/forms.html>
-------------------------
Code examples:
-------------------------
This is myForm.fdf:
(Note that it points to a PDF template that's located on
my server. You can download/save the PDF to examine it, if you wish, via
the URL specified.)
<CFOUTPUT>%FDF-1.2
%����
1 0 obj
<<
/FDF << /Fields [ << /V (#variables.Body#)/T (Body)>>
<< /V (#variables.To#)/T (To)>>
]
/F (http://www.worlddesign.com/testing/myForm.pdf)>>
>>
endobj
trailer
<<
/Root 1 0 R
>>
%%EOF
</CFOUTPUT>
This is returnPDF.cfm:
<CFSETTING ENABLECFOUTPUTONLY="YES">
<!--- returnPDF.cfm, example/test code.
Returns an Adobe FDF file to the browser. The FDF file
contains form value data and a pointer to a template PDF file. The
FDF file being used is called myForm.fdf. The end
result is that the PDF template is displayed to the user using the form data
dynamically populated in the FDF file.
See
<http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/acrosdk/forms.html> for more
information of Adobe's FDF format.
--->
<!--- Set a debug flag. A value of 1 will help debug
the FDF file if necessary. --->
<CFPARAM NAME="URL.Debug" DEFAULT="0">
<!--- Set values for the variables used in myForm.fdf.
This could also be a query or whatever. --->
<CFSET variables.To = "[EMAIL PROTECTED]">
<CFSET variables.Body = "This is some text (for) the
body of the message.">
<!--- Need to escape any parenthesis using the
backslash
(the parenthesis are used as control characters in
FDF).
This step is only necessary if your values might
contain '(' or ')' characters. --->
<CFSET variables.Body = ReplaceList( variables.Body,
"(,)", "\(,\)" )>
<!--- If debug is not on, specify the file name and
content type for the browser --->
<CFIF NOT URL.Debug>
<CFHEADER NAME="Content-Disposition" VALUE="inline;
filename=myForm.fdf">
<CFCONTENT TYPE="application/vnd.fdf">
</CFIF>
<!--- Avoid any white space before the actual content
is sent.
A leading blank line will cause an Acrobat error. --->
<CFSETTING ENABLECFOUTPUTONLY="NO"><CFINCLUDE
TEMPLATE="myForm.fdf">
Jean wrote:
> I am pretty sure that I have heard through the grapevine that it is
> possible to create PDF's with ColdFusion. Anyone know of the smiplest
> way?
>
> Thank you in advance.
>
> -Jean
>
> =====
> Veni, Vedi, Velcro.
> I came, I saw, I stuck with it.
>
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--
Billy Cravens
HR Web Development, Sabre
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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