best way to produce PDF output from Classic ASP

[Former Community Member]

I have Adobe Professional 9.2 and LiveCycle ES Designer 8.1. I need to change a Classic ASP web application to produce a PDF report. The way I see it I have three options:

1) create native PDF output using open source libraries.

2) create an FDF form with Adobe Pro as a template and use FDF libraries from Adobe to substitute text in the template

3) create an XML form with LiveCycle as a template and do direct text substitution into the XML.

I created a PDF with LiveCycle and prior to saving, unchecked the "save PDF files compressed" in tools/options. I don't want any text boxes, just labels, and in some of the labels I will put distinguishable text. When the web application uses the template it will find various text strings in the XML stream and substitute.

What's the best way to do this? Is there a better way of doing substitution into the LiveCycle template? I would like to stay with LiveCycle. But from code samples I've seen, FDF substitution is very straightforward and possibly easier. I also thought LiveCycle is supposed to be the way to go instead of Adobe Pro. Thanks

[Former Community Member]

When I change text in the PDF that was created with LiveCycle, using a hex editor, the text still displays the old value when the PDF is viewed in the reader, but displays the new value when viewed in LiveCycle. I cannot find another instance of the text in the file. Doing direct text substitution is probably not the best way to go, then.

[Former Community Member]

I cannot speak about theother methods but I can speak about the XFA method. In most cases people will bind the xml to the rawValue property of the field thereby filling the field with the value. However there are other bindable properties. Caption is one of them. first you have to turn on the Dynamic Properties. Click on th efield you want to control on on the Object palette click the icon as shown below:

A new menu will open like this:

Turn that option on and the Caption will turn a different color and will become a link. Click on the link and then you can map the caption to a node in your XML structure. This assumes that you have created a Data Connection to bind with.

Paul

[Former Community Member]

Absolutely not ....

Paul

[Former Community Member]

Thanks, Paul. I played with it a bit. I don't think I can do the XFA method because there is no such functionality on the web server where the web application runs.

Does Adobe have libraries to download and use for LiveCycle created files similar to the way FDF works? Thanks

[Former Community Member · Accepted solution]

There is a server basd program family of products called LiveCycle that do all that and more. Note that is enterprise based software so it is not cheap.

Paul

[Former Community Member]

Thanks Paul. I have Adobe Pro and LiveCycle Designer both installed. I didn't know LiveCycle only makes server based stuff and I was hoping to do everything directly from the Classic ASP application. We have decided to set up an Adobe Server process for this.