Using WebDAV protocol how to read remote PDF files from within AEM via Document Service API (OutputService)

[hrai]

Hello experts,

One of our client has good storage of promotional materials on Windows drive, and metadata is being maintained via MSSQL DB. Customer wants to utilize AEM Forms Document Service API  (OutputService) to print a PDF. While printing the whole PDF customer would like to assemble and merge few promotional materials from Windows drive. However AEM is hosted on Linux.

We would like to know following:

• What is the best protocol to read promotional PDF via http (such as WebDAV)
• Can we mount Windows drive on Linux server as a local drive and read PDF using WebDAV
• Will we need to download PDF first then we can read in Document Service API or after mounting we can directly read from path via WebDAV protocol

Please note

• we do not want to use smb/cifs
• http protocol such as WebDAV could be an option
• we can to avoid latency of download and then read so mounting the drive and reading via WebDAV looks an option

Please share your best practices, thank you.

[Vijay_Katoch]

As per your setup, one option could be the java component should be written which will fetch the metadata from DB and then fetch the pdf to merge from the drive.

The WebDAV usage I have seen to map the AEM repository, to upload or fetch the data from/to the repo.

[hrai]

thanks for the response. One question

>> 

The WebDAV usage I have seen to map the AEM repository, to upload or fetch the data from/to the repo.

yes WebDAV can be used to access the aem repository. Here we are talking about accessing PDF from AEM with Document Services API (AssemblerService). How do we do that?

[Vijay_Katoch]

You need to read the pdf from storage directory by using java custom service.

This is the one use case we have done.

Reading the pdf from a storage device by using java, created the map of document then passed that map and ddx to assembler service.

This could be the one of solution to your problem.

[hrai]

>> 

You need to read the pdf from storage directory by using java custom service.

Are you saying via OSGi service in AEM. Well could you provide little bit more details what java API you have used to read from storage in AEM?

[Vijay_Katoch · Accepted solution]

For us storage is AWS S3, so using S3 api to access docs in java.