LiveCycle with .Net 2.0: Combine various file types into one PDF

[Former Community Member]

Hello ,



Let me explain the requirements.



.Net 2.0 based custom solution residing on "Server"

Input File Types : DOC, PPT, MS Project, TXT, RTF, HTML, PostScript and all image types

Number of input Files : unlimited.

Output File Type : PDF

Number of output files : One.



i. e. Combine & convert various files into one final PDF file.



Now comes the part related to all doubts / questions.

Here they are :-



1. Will the "Element" version of the product satisfy all requirements? If not, which "version" should be used?



2. I read somewhere on the forums that I cannot use 'Livecyle PDF Generator'. Is that true ? What tool / feature of "Livecyle" product can be used to satisfy the requirements ?



3. I read that "Livecycle" needs "JAVA Server". Does that mean I need to install the JAVA Server and necessary infrastructure on "Server" machine before "Livecyle" can be used in "server" based environment ?



4. Can "Livecycle" be used in "server cluster" based environment and satisfy my requirements?



5. I want to confirm. "Livecycle" does not exposes native APIs that can be directly / natively consumed by .NET assembly. Is that correct ?



6. If I need to use "Livecycle" in .NET solution, the only available option is to call Web Services exposed by "LiveCycle" and consume it in .NET application. Correct ?



7. Can I insert / append "custom information" between the files that will be converted / appended into destination PDF file ?



Any information , links to sample .NET Code , stepwise instruction set is greatly appreciated.



Thanks.

[Former Community Member]

Hello,

I will try to answer your questions:



1. The Elements editions seems to meet your needs. Check the website at this address: http://www.adobe.com/products/server/pdfgenerator/pdfs/95006032_pdfg_matrix_ue.pdf . Note that the Elements edition does not support conversion of Visio files.



2. The LiveCycle PDF Generator does only create PDF from miscellaneous source files. It cannot be used to combine different sources to one PDF. I guess that there is another Adobe product that does the job. You could also post-process your PDF files using API such as iText (Java) or iTextSharp (.NET).



3. LiveCycle PDF Generator is a java application. There is a turnkey installation that automatically and transparently installs the JDK, Jboss and mySQL database. So if you use the turnkey installation, you don't need to install anything by yourself. However, if you want to use another J2EE infrastructure (such as WebSphere or Weblogic), you will have some manual installation steps to perform.



Please note that prior to installing LiveCycle PDF Generator, you must install all the applications that are required to convert files to PDF (all MS Office apps must be installed *BEFORE* installing LiveCycle PDF Generator).



4. I can't answer this question. In my opinion, if the java application server allows acluster installation, Adobe PDF Generator will support it, but this is just a guess.



5. Because LiveCycle PDF Generator is a java application, it exposes only EJB components. However, it also exposes web services that can be used with a .NET app (need to use the .net web services extensions in order to process the attachements).



6. Yes, that is correct. Or you can use the watch folders to generate PDF, but this is much less elegant. Another option is sending the files through e-mail and have a process that analyses the received files as message attachements.



7. No custom information can be inserted. Once again, to do this, you should use another Adobe server product, or post-process your PDF files using a PDF processing library such as iTextSharp or iText.



You can find sample code for .NET at this page : http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/samples.html, or directly here: http://download.macromedia.com/pub/developer/lc_pdfgenerator_7_0_samples_1_0_lean.zip



Regards,

Jerome K