Content

Introduction

The PDF generator takes an html template, fills variables inside that template and creates a pdf from the merged html.
Attachments like other pdfs or images may be appended.

Key Capabilities

Capability	Description
PDF generation	Create PDF files from html templates alongside given variables to be filled in the template. Attachments may be appended in form of other pdf or images files.

Module Setup & Configuration

No configuration necessary.

Example data

Sample HTML template

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional //EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
<head>
    <!-- templates may also include css -->
    <style>
    	body {
    		font-family: 'Arial', sans-serif;
    		color: #545454;
    		font-weight: 100;
    	}
    </style>
</head>
 
<body>
 
    <table class="root-table">
		<tbody>
		
            <!-- Example of an image variable. The module will generate the base64 data from a given image -->
            <tr>
                <td>Image:</td>
                <td><img src="data:image/png;base64,${profilePic}" /></td>
            </tr>
 
            <!-- Example of a string variable -->
            <tr>
		        <td>First name:</td>
		        <td>${firstName}</td>
	        </tr>
	        
        </tbody>
	</table>
 
    <!-- Example of a list of strings variable -->
    <div class="additional-info__box">
        <h4>Fees</h4>
        <#list fees as item>
		    <p>${item}</p>
        </#list>
    </div>
	
</body>
</html>

Your variables might then look like:

StringVariable firstName: key: "firstName", content: "Jens"
StringListVariable fees: key: "fees", content: ["125", "166", "23"]
ImageVariable: profilePic: key: "profilePic", contentURL: "http://www.xxxxxx.com/image.png" (we will not post byte arrays here)

Example

Follow the steps provided below in order to create the desired pdf file.

Frontend Use

Create instances of all string, string list and image variables that may occur in your html template. These variables occur
in the form of ${attribute_name}. Provide keys as well as contents.
Create your Attachment instances and provide file contents.
Create an instance of PDFTemplate. From here, reference all necessary StringVariables, StringListVariables
and ImageVariables.
Create a PDFResult object and set references to Attachments and the PDFTemplate.
Now, the module will create the pdf file. It should be available for download after a moment.

Backend Use

Follow steps 1. - 3. as shown above.
Create a PDFResult object and set references to Attachments and the PDFTemplate.
You need to invoke pdf creation yourself. The package com.apiomat.nativemodule.pdfgenerator contains the
public class PDFHelper. Instantiate that class using PDFResult and Request. This example illustrates the procedure:
- PDFHelper
PDFHelper helper = new PDFHelper( pdfResult, request );

try

{

/* try to generate pdf file. On success, it will be stored in the content attribute of

* pdfResult.

* TemplateException: variables in html template are unset */

helper.generatePdf( );

}

catch ( IOException e )

{

PDFGenerator.AOM.logError( request.getApplicationName( ), e, false );

e.printStackTrace( );

}

catch ( TemplateException e )

{

String error = "Missing required variable: ${" + e.getBlamedExpressionString( ) + "}";

PDFGenerator.AOM.logError( request.getApplicationName( ), error, false );

e.printStackTrace( );

}

Limitations

If creating the pdf file from your given template information fails, the error should be that variables in the template were not filled by Variables provided.
In that case, doublecheck, if you have any typo for key names or if keys are missing.

PDF creation from attachments alone won't work either. The primary function of this module is the creation from html.

Detailled Module Workflow

Classes

Class name	Attributes	Description
Variable	key: String that refers to the name of a variable in the raw html template	Super class for distinct Variable types
StringVariable	content: String containing a variable's value	Sub class of Variable. Used for single String variables in template.
StringListVariable	content: List containing a set of Strings	Sub class of Variable. Used for declarations of lists of String variables in template.
ImageVariable	content: Image that is to be placed into the template. width: desired image display width height: desired image display height	Sub class of Variable. Used to fill image variables in template as base64 representations.
PDFTemplate	content: String to place the html template in stringVariabes: collection of all string variables to be put into the html stringListVariables: all string lists to be filled in the template imageVariables: all images to be filled into the template	An object of this class takes an html template and all variables as key-value-pairs that belong to the actual template.
PDFResult	content: this place is filled by the resulting pdf files if it can be successfully created from a PDFTemplate template: a reference to a PDFTemplate used to render the desired pdf attachments: list of files (either pdfs or images) that are to be appended to the resulting pdf	An object of this class uses a template to create a pdf file from html. Attachments may be added and are appended to the file.
Attachment	content: File (pdf or any image) that may be attached to a PDFResult

Sequence

After setting a reference from a PDFResult object to a PDFTemplate object (PDFResult's template attribute) or adding references to
Attachment objects, the module calls it's afterPostRef-Method that invokes the creation of the actual pdf file.

In order for this operation to succeed, the template attribute must be not null.

Errors may occur if variables in the html template are not filled out by Variable objects.

PDF-Generator Module