Closed. This question is off-topic. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it's on-topic for Stack Overflow.
Closed 9 years ago.
Improve this question
I have an ASP.NET 4.0 Web Application that needs to create application forms for insurance. Basically, the program loads a PDF Template, populates the form fields, then flattens and closes the PDF. The templates are small when I create them from Word (about 156k for 5 pages) but each form field added to the template via Adobe Acrobat adds about 5-10k to the overall file size. Unfortunately, these pages have a whole lot of form fields (200+), and the end result tends to be about half a MB to a 1 MB per page.
Can anyone suggest an alternate application, usable dynamically from an ASP.NET webpage, that can do a similar job but maintain a smaller file size? It doesn't need to be a free component, but it does need to have a way for me to create a template from a word document but not use Office automation to populate the word doc and save as PDF. My preference would also be that it deal with streams and not files, but that is a minor consideration for me in the circumstances.
Take a look at ABCpdf, I'm pretty sure it can handle what you're looking for
It might be worth looking at Docmosis. You can use word documents as templates to populate and produce PDF and other outputs. Because of the way it works, the document size will not "explode" as you have indicated is a problem with a large number of fields with your current scenario. ASP.NET can invoke Docmosis in various ways depending on your application's runtime environment. Docmosis offers online web-services which have minimal footprint/requirements for an application environment as well as downloadable and embeddable options. It is commercial (I work for the company that created it) and has no Office Automation requirements.
Hope that helps.
You might try Docotic.Pdf library for this.
The library can be used to fill existing fields from code or by importing FDF files.
The library can not flatten form fields but you can make fields read-only or protect the whole document from changes with permissions.
Here are some sample that might be useful:
Fill existing form
Import FDF data
Find control by name
Permissions
Disclaimer: I work for the vendor of the library.
Related
Closed. This question needs to be more focused. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by editing this post.
Closed 7 months ago.
Improve this question
I need to convert Word documents to PDF in a Django application. The user uploads a Word document template. The application should then do a mail merge based on data in the database and save the PDF.
The volume can be quite substantial - up to 50000 in a batch.
I've tried various libraries including Aspose and I found formatting issues with all of them. It just doesn't look the same compared to opening the real Microsoft Word and saving as a PDF.
It seems like my only option is to automate Microsoft Word from a .NET application.
Since my application runs on a Linux server, I would need to create a separate asp.net application with Word installed. The app then takes the word document as input and returns the PDF.
I'm confident I can get it to work, but it feels like a big hack and not sure how well it will handle 50000 PDFs. It seems like there should be better ways but I can't find it? I'm also wondering if this will create a licensing issue.
Any ideas will be appreciated.
You should note, to properly layout and render MS Word document to PDF or any other fixed page format (XPS, Image etc) the fonts used in the document are required. If Aspose.Words cannot find the required fonts, the missed fonts are substituted according to substitution rules. Font substitution might affect document layout. You can implement IWarningCallback to get a warning when font substitution is performed.
Since you are running conversion on Linux, most likely, MS fonts are not available there by default and you should install the required fonts. Alternatively, you can simply copy the required fonts into some folder and specify true type fonts location in FontSettings. I believe installing the required fonts will resolve formatting issues on your side.
Closed. This question needs to be more focused. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by editing this post.
Closed 1 year ago.
Improve this question
I want your suggestions to start a simple software developement.
I'm an intern student and i want to build, preferably, something that can be acceced with a user authentication to a specific number of users < 5 so that each one of them can access the analysis of the data that concerns him. Preferably :
I want my users to get to the app through the browser
The users are those who will provide data to the app through an upload file button so this latter can output the whole analysis
the app should have a professional look
I'm supposed to work with these four-five peapole to determine what they want to see so i can prepare all the analysis code that corresponds to the right feeded data. genrally the data will have csv excel format.
I've start working with R shiny then I built a single shiny app for control and mangement director that contains a dahsboard with analysis/viZ elements. Then i figured out that I cannot add the feature of multiple users and neither the authotication feature. then I've start learning django but i realized that it's quite harder to do it in a month. I searched for django-plotly-library but I always hesitate to work and learn until the end.
well, now i'm open to learn anything that can solve this issue. I've been hesitating for a month to choose the right technology. I appreciate your suggestions and remarks.
Django User's Guide gives you most of the answers, mainly regarding the authentication. https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.2/topics/auth/
Corey Schafer does high quality videos, here on the authentication:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4jPR-M0TAQ
For the professional look : bootstrap + django-crispy-forms, it's very convenient.
To upload data: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs6dXL9Wp7s&t=882s
In terms of Django it is completely possible to modify data served to each user. You can do it with the use of permissions or even with the use of front technologies such as filtering data.
"the app should have a professional look" is such a general statement I don't think there is anything to be suggested. If you want for this app to look "professional" you can try using some react templates such as react-admin.
Django has builtin auth system and it is highly configurable. But if you want that "industry standard" frontend you should write your backend in DRF and add React/Vue/Svelte etc.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 8 years ago.
Improve this question
I am programming a website in asp.net Visual Web Developer which I am going to have a lot of product pictures to display on the webpage. Should I store all my images in SQL Server and pull each picture from there or should I store all of the images in a "Picture" folder created inside of my website root folder? Is there a big difference? The Images would be linked to other tables in the database by using the Order_Number this is not a problem.
Too long for a comment.
Images in the database -- I know too many people that regret that decision. Just don't do it except perhaps in light duty usage.
Don't store the path of the image in the database. If you ever have to split images into multiple locations you will have a big mess. Ideally you store a unique (string) identifier hash. Then you computer via a shared function to correct location to pull this from based on the hashed name.
For version 1.0 you could just dump everything into a single directory (so your hash to directory function is very simple). Ideally you want the generated name to be "randomly distributed", i.e., as likely to be zq% as an%. You also ideally want it to be short. Unique is a requirement. For example, you could use an identity field - guaranteed unique but not randomly distributed. If you have large numbers of images, you will want to store these in multiple directory -- so you don't essentially lock up your machine if you ever look at this directory with windows explorer.
A good practice is to combine methods. e.g. Make a hashing function that yield 4 characters (perhaps by keeping only 4 characters of output from TSQL HASHBYTES or CHECKSUM (hashing the identity value) and making the short hash the directory name. Now use the identity value as the filename and you have a simple and scaleable design since you can tweak the algorithm down the road if needed.
Store them on the hard drive, this will allow IIS to cache them and serve them much more efficiently. If you make it so that requesting an image requires invoking a controller IIS cannot cache the image as a static file.
Closed. This question needs debugging details. It is not currently accepting answers.
Edit the question to include desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce the problem. This will help others answer the question.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
I created a content type for some Quizz on my site, and now I'd like to create a basic form (only available to admins) to pull some stats on them.
The fields used for the quizz are name, start date, end date and correct answer. Each of these fields should be a searchable criteria in the form, and return a list of quizz. There should also be a relationship with the user table to display a list of those who answered the quizz.
Later I'm gonna need an option to extract the data in excel, but let's focus on the form first.
The version i'm using is Drupal6 and please take in consideration that I'm still pretty new to Drupal.
How can I do this?
I imagine you are using CCK for the 'quiz' content type?
If you are, then the best way to 'mash' this data up with getting overly complex is to use Views. You can think of views as an interactive SQL query builder.
You can create pages, blocks or even RSS feeds from the output of Views.
Module Forena seems like a valid alternative to consider. For more details about Forena, 2 types of documentation are available:
Community documentation.
Documentation that comes with Forena, which you can access right after install and enable of the module. Checkout the demo site for an online example of the current:
Forena documentation - use the link 'Reporting documentation' or visit relative link /reports/help.
Forena samples - use the link 'Reporting samples' or visit relative link /reports/samples (these samples are fully functional, so make sure to experiment a bit with it, such as the drill downs available on the SVG Graph sample).
The newest 7.x-4.x version also includes an amazing (I think) UI for either creating your reports (the WYSIWYG report editor) and/or for creating your SQL queries (the Query Builder).
Be aware: I'm a co-maintainer of Forena.
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
Questions asking us to recommend or find a book, tool, software library, tutorial or other off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.
Closed 8 years ago.
Improve this question
Sharepoint's lists functionality is powerful. Because I don't want all the other functionality of Sharepoint, I have been looking for an alternative (preferrable open source) without much success.
Basically I want to have a platform or web application that:
allows us to define custom datatypes (for different kinds of customer products)
has the possibility to create views or forms to present to the user for reading, creating or updating the information of the items of a given datatype
a ui to setup this configuration is not required but would be nice to have
In an ideal scenario there is an API to get the data out afterwards for further processing.
I have heard of Alfresco (but have not used it) which is a free open source content management system.
To address each of your mentioned needed features:
1. It has the ability to add custom content types via XML (http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Step-By-Step:_Creating_A_Custom_Model).
2. I didn't see a lot of support of individual views but generic views can be setup when creating your model
3. Alfresco has provided installation guides for various installation configurations. They require a login to download the guides (http://www.alfresco.com/products/docs/)
4. REST support.
List of Features from 10K view.
I would check out all of the features before validating it fits your needs. (http://www.alfresco.com/products/dm/features/)
I share your quest for an open source alternative to sharepoint list functionality. What I like/need about sharepoint is :
Can import from existing Excel files (removes alot of fear from a customer viewpoint, lots of legacy Excel files out there)
Can export to Excel format (idem on the fear thing, some customers just need their Excel fix)
Provides out of the box sorting/filtering
good pre-defined datatypes and easy to define custom datatypes
Makes it easy to define different views and display styles (customers love the preview pane)
Lists/views can be inserted easily into other webpages/wikipages
I know that jqgrid and http://datatables.net/ gives table/grid editing/sorting/filtering functionality with pre-definedable datatypes but you need to do the backend work ( they give lots of exapmles in PHP).
If I was to define what I'd love to see for internal use in our team it would be :
Content management via wiki, with semi-decent WYSIWYG as default
default table/grid/list management with all of the previously listed features
I'd say that if mediawiki/dokuwiki/phpwiki etc. could repackage with WYSIWYG and list handling then the entire planet would just love them for it.
Best regards / Colm
P.S. The only grief I'd have with Alfresco is the sledgehammer/fly metaphor insofar as it provides far more functionality than I require meaning that the overhead for getting up to speed and then maintaining the installation is prohibitive.
P.P.S I also looking at http://www.tiki.org who claim to have "spreadsheet" functionality built in (jquery based).