Creating PDFs Programmatically

[jgilbert]

I have the seam-pdf functionality working in my application. Now I want to have a background process create PDFs periodically. Currently I am using commons-httpclient to call out and back into my app and handle the redirect to create a PDF.

It works but does anyone have a better way to do this?

[norman.richards]

You might look at the EJB3 timer services and maybe even the Seam asynchronous wrappers on it. (although I think in terms of manageability something like quartz might be better than the EJB3 timer stuff)

[jgilbert]

actually, i don't think i asked the question right. i'm looking for an api to call the pdf stuff without having to go over http.

[mrobinson28]

Seam is using iText:

http://www.lowagie.com/iText/

http://docs.jboss.com/seam/1.2.1.GA/reference/en/html_single/#itext

Michael

[nhpvti]

"jgilbert" wrote:
I have the seam-pdf functionality working in my application. Now I want to have a background process create PDFs periodically. Currently I am using commons-httpclient to call out and back into my app and handle the redirect to create a PDF.

It works but does anyone have a better way to do this?

I'd like to know it too.

But if you are simply sending PDFs by email here is a very elegant solution:

http://docs.jboss.com/seam/1.2.1.GA/reference/en/html_single/#d0e8925

And it gets even better, you can attach a Seam generated PDF, or any standard JSF view, just by wrapping a <m:attachment> around the normal tags you would use:

<m:attachment fileName="tiny.pdf">
 <p:document>
 A very tiny PDF
 </p:document>
</m:attachment>

I must say that I didn't try it myself yet.

[pmuir]

Can you file a JIRA issue for this - I can't currently see an easy way to do it...

[jgilbert]

i am currently using commons-http client to access it.

1 - i make the inital http GET
2 - then i parse the redirect response to calculate the new url
3 - then i do another GET

it works but...

a wrapper similar to the mail render would be nice, but for my scenario it would need to work outside the scope of a JSF UI request.