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Render PDF form as HTML

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Level 4

We are currently upgrading from LC ES 4 to AEM Forms 6.4 and are in the process of migrating our Flex workspace to the HTML workspace. We would also like to be able to render our XDP PDF Forms in HTML. We pre-fill our forms and add a form bridge using a custom action profile, so changing the start point action profile render process to HTML doesn't give the expected result.

 

Are there any resources out there that can offer assistance or pointers on this?

1 Accepted Solution

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Level 2

Sounds like you need to create your own HTML Render service and use that in a custom render profile - depending on what the actual issue is with your render

7 Replies

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Level 1

Here is a documentation which talks about "Migrating from Flex Workspace to AEM Forms workspace" as well as "HTML rendering of XDP Forms".

 

[0]: https://helpx.adobe.com/in/experience-manager/6-4/forms/using/html-workspace-overview.html

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Level 4
I have read that page already, and it does not mention how to get a custom action profile rendered as HTML. As I mentioned in my post, changing the action profile does not render our form properly.

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Employee Advisor

Hi Sean,

 

When you have an XDP then there are multiple ways to render it as HTML.

1. use HTML WS

2. Use the render profile

3. Upload it to forms Manager portal on OSGI side and use preview as HTML

 

Pretty much all the technique uses the default rendering profile and the URL construct for point 2 can be done using below document:

https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/6-3/forms/using/rendering-form-template.html

 

Now, as you see the the document you will notice that you need to use dataRef for dataXml and for custom profile you can follow the below link:

https://helpx.adobe.com/aem-forms/6/html5-forms/custom-profile.html

 

Regarding HTML WS question, please share more details.

 

Thanks,

Mayank Gandhi

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Level 2

Sounds like you need to create your own HTML Render service and use that in a custom render profile - depending on what the actual issue is with your render

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Level 4

When I use the HTML ws, my form is rendered in PDF format. We are using Workbench to set a custom action profile for when the task is assigned to a user. This custom action profile pulls information from our db that sets up the form in different ways based on the user.

If I change the action profile for the task to the default HTML profile, it will render the form in HTML, but none of the data I collect in my custom profile is added to the form.

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Employee

Not sure if you found a solution but I can offer some explanations:

I have a complex process which uses a custom render orchestration which stitches XDPs together and modifies the data and then returns a PDF with reader extensions.

Kosta_Prokopiu1_0-1601475545016.png

When I started to migrate this to HTML (experimental) I had to go about it completely differently because I did not get my form rendered and data prefilled. I re-designed my whole form to not being stitched (HTML renderer cannot pick it up - it must be accessible in the application or from the CRX repository)

First I added a prepareData process setting some basic values

Kosta_Prokopiu1_1-1601475701928.png

And I then use the Render New HTML Form process in the profile

Kosta_Prokopiu1_4-1601476050960.png

The main difference is that you do not get the HTML as a return byte-stream like the PDF but a URL that gets called in ws by the browser which in turn renders the HTML with merged data on the server and then displays it inside ws.