Read HTML or XML data & paste in PDF form (template)

Programming Questions

paul_ngc

Read HTML or XML data & paste in PDF form (template)

in Programming Questions • 2 years ago

At the moment I'm still coding my website where I will place blog items. I write those blogs in texteditor and add images later on. So online everything looks good, but I don't have the files locally.

So what I was thinking to have an app made with processing that does the following:

1. Enter URL where the blog is located

2. Press Enter or click button to read all the html or xml data

3. Export automatically the PDF form/template (made with Adobe Acrobat) that paste the text and images in the assigned fields.

This way I can have a sleek archive from my blog items in the pdf format. Easy to find something back.

With http://processing.org/reference/XMLElement.html I can load xml data, but I'm not sure about the exporting into the pdf form. And this library http://creativecomputing.cc/p5libs/proxml/ also doesn't say anything about exporting.

Now is my question or this possible is with Processing, or do I have to take a look at Adobe Air?

Replies(4)

PhiLho

Re: Read XML data & paste in PDF form (template)

2 years ago

" I write those blogs in texteditor" ... " I don't have the files locally"
Look contradictory, unless you mean some text area in a Web page. Are you using a blog or a CMS application? Often, those offer an export option.

" Export automatically the PDF form/template (made with Adobe Acrobat) that paste the text and images in the assigned fields."
I don't follow you there, perhaps that's my lack of PDF knowledge. What PDF forms (like those to input names and address?) have to do with getting a Web site?

" This way I can have a sleek archive from my blog items in the pdf format."
Not a very good archive format. It will be hard to get back HTML from there if you even need to restore a page, for some reason.
Beside, I don't understand either what you plan to do between XML and PDF. I know utilities to convert HTML to PDF, but from XML, it would need quite some processing (no pun intended) to format it nicely.

paul_ngc

Re: Read XML data & paste in PDF form (template)

2 years ago

@phil.lho

Thanks for your answer. Here is an image to make it more clear what I've in mind.

About the xml. I thought that xml was the best option for. From what I've read online, everybody is talking about xml and pdf forms so I thought that this was the standard. But I'm fine to use html as well. Would be even easier I guess. I hope the image gives a better view of what I'm looking for.

PhiLho

Re: Read XML data & paste in PDF form (template)

2 years ago

So you want to get Web site as XML data, and export it to PDF with a given layout, different from the Web one.
I suggest to have a look at the iText Java library, it is one of the best to output PDF (it is used by Processing, actually).
But it won't be straightforward.

paul_ngc

Re: Re: Read XML data & paste in PDF form (template)

2 years ago

Thanks for the answer. iText looks interesting. Going to check more about this and read this example from Toxi: http://toxi.co.uk/blog/2007/08/creating-weblinks-in-pdf-with-itext.htm

But it doesn't have to be XML. I just thought that XML must be used to paste data in a pdf template. So if HTML is a much better way to do this I would love to hear

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