Morning David, Thought I felt my ears burning last night. Anyway, the code is fairly simple but it does entail using OpenOffice and UNO which means that performance is likely to be an issue - think of OLE/COM as the mechanism is the same. Having said that, I would not even bother, simply locate an application called JODConverter (http://www.artofsolving.com/opensource/jodconverter) which already uses OpenOffice to perform file conversions (including Excel to PDF) and take a good look at that. If then you still want to proceed with using 'naked' UNO code (and I would not) then you wil have two options to consider;
1. To build the workbook using POI, save it to a temporary file, read that file using OpenOffice and then expeort the workbook as a PDF file. 2. To use OpenOffice to control the entire process; let it build the workbook for you and then simply export it as a PDF file. option 2 has the advantage of allowing you to go straight to the PDF file but it also raises the spectre of building the workbook entirley using UNO code. It cann be done but is not a trivial task to tackle. As UNO is designed to support many different languages it is orientated heavilly around factory classes to which you submit requests for objects, cast them to the appropriate type and then execute methods on them to either get further objects or acheiev some work. It takes a little getting used to and, because Interfaces are so heavilly used throughout, the documentation seems a little opaque at first as you try to work out what object you need to achieve which task. Also, there could be problems if the application is run on a server rather than on a stand alone PC as I am still not certain about OpenOffice's capabilities in this regard. I already have a class with the ability to export to PDF format and will try to look it out over the weekend. When, and if, I find it, I wil post the code here. If you still intend to use UNO, you will need to do a few things in advance of this; 1. Download and install OpenOffice onto your machine. 2. Download and install the OpenOffice SDK onto your machine. 3. Locate and install the OpenOffice SDK plug-in for your development environment. As far as I know, there are versions available for both NetBeans and Eclipse. I would certainly advise you to install this plug-in as the configuration will otherwise be quite complex and is certainly not something I am qualified to talk you through. 4. Locate the supporting documentation for the UNO interface. 5. Join the oooforum.org website. There are lots of excellent code samples there and far more experienced persons than I who can help out when you hit problems - and I am confident that you will hit problems if you choose to use 'naked' UNO. Yours Mark B -- View this message in context: http://apache-poi.1045710.n5.nabble.com/convert-poi-generated-excel-to-pdf-tp3362053p3362486.html Sent from the POI - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
