Re: [Chiba-users] Generating PDF from XForms

[Ronald v. K. <rv...@gm...>]

Look at the flyingsaucer (https://xhtmlrenderer.dev.java.net/) project from
Sun.... does a great job making PDF from HTML also using css/js and since
you already have a XSL that makes the HTML

On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 1:13 AM, Scott Warren <sco...@oc...>
wrote:

> In the past I have used option 3. Using Cocoon I have accepted the instance
> into an eXist database then when generating the PDF I query the eXist
> database for the file using an ID. Then used XSL-FO and the PDF Generator
> to
> do the job.
>
> It works fine. I tried having the instance stored in the session but for
> some reason it kept getting wiped before the user saw the PDF (and the user
> had a "Show PDF" trigger on the form)
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Option 1 sounds reusable and you possibly donate it back to Chiba?
>
> Regards
>
> Scott Warren
> Ocom Software
> ... Exceeding Quality....
> web     | ocom.com.au
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: chi...@li...
> [mailto:chi...@li...] On Behalf Of Tambet
> Matiisen
> Sent: Friday, 6 June 2008 7:50 PM
> To: chiba-users
> Subject: [Chiba-users] Generating PDF from XForms
>
> Hi everybody!
>
> In our current project we automatically generate XForms user interface
> for web services. The generator is implemented as XSL transformation,
> which gets WSDL file for input and spits out XForms files for every
> operation. The XForms files contain two instances - one for web service
> request and one response - and also two forms, separated with
> switch/case construct. We use generic XForms tags for form layout and
> have modified Chiba stylesheets to display it with our preferred
> formatting.
>
> Now we have to implement option to save web service response as a PDF
> file. Technically we add "Save as PDF" button to response form, which
> submits response instance to server side script, which then transforms
> it to PDF and outputs the file.
>
> It would be nice to reuse our code which generates XForms form for the
> response. The response doesn't contain any input fields, so the only
> XForms elements used are repeat, group and output. We would like to have
> reasonable default formatting, that could be easily customized.
>
> I have few ideas for this, but I would be delighted to have your
> comments or experiences:
>
> 1. Create XSL-FO stylesheet for Chiba. Apply Chiba with that stylesheet
> to response instance and feed result to Apache FOP. Sounds like a lot of
> work, because I would have to learn XSL-FO first. But we can use our
> existing code, that generates XForms forms. Has anybody tried to make
> XSL-FO stylesheet for Chiba?
>
> 2. Create OpenOffice.org Writer file with XForms tags and use Export to
> PDF option. See
> http://opendocument.xml.org/files/xforms_ooo_06_10_25.pdf and
> http://www.idealliance.org/proceedings/xml04/papers/110/xml2004_ideadb.html
> .
>
> This somehow seems simpler and has additional benefit, that nontechnical
> users may be able to design the resulting document. The downside is,
> that I have to introduce dependency to OpenOffice.org, which by default
> is not server-side application.
>
> 3. Discard the XForms for PDF and generate XSLT stylesheet instead, that
> transforms the response XML to XSL-FO. Or even transform the response to
> HTML and use something like HTMLDOC (http://www.htmldoc.org/) to convert
> it to PDF. This might not be easy, as we have to rethink the logic, how
> to generate XSL, which generates HTML/XSL-FO form, while we already have
> the code for generating XForms.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>  Tambet
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace.
> It's the best place to buy or sell services for
> just about anything Open Source.
> http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php
> _______________________________________________
> Chiba-users mailing list
> Chi...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/chiba-users
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace.
> It's the best place to buy or sell services for
> just about anything Open Source.
> http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php
> _______________________________________________
> Chiba-users mailing list
> Chi...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/chiba-users
>