ABCPDF Plugin Enhancements

posted Nov 18, 2016, 8:46 AM by Eric Patrick   [ updated Nov 18, 2016, 10:02 AM ]

Overview

The ABCPDF plugin (qbo.Attachment.ABCPDF) has been enhanced to support the following features:
  • PdfConvert: an IService that attempts to convert files to PDF
  • PdfMerge: now supports merging Image files, marks invalid documents with a 'Invalid Source' status
  • All: supports async/await pattern for scalability
  • Updated to ABCPDF version 10

PDF Convert

This supports several file formats, including text, TIFF, HTML, PNG, JPEG, BMP, and PDF. The method signature to call is:

Attachment/ToPDF?ID={IdList}[&ThrowOnError={bool}][&Overwrite={bool}]

Optional Parameters:
  • ThrowOnError: if true, encountering an invalid document will throw an error. If false, no error is thrown
  • Overwrite: if true, the original file is overwritten with the PDF version. If false, a new Attachment is created
Application Settings:
  • ConvertOverwriteDefault: (True) if the Overwrite parameter is not specified, this default is used
  • ConvertOverwritePDFWithPDF: (True) if true, an attempt is made to convert a .PDF file to .PDF. This essentially validates the PDF.
  • ConvertThrowOnError: (False) if the ThrowOnError parameter is not specified, this default is used

PDF Merge

The PdfMerge plugin merges multiple documents into a single PDF. It expects a DataSet, DataReader, or XmlReader containing AttachmentIDs, and attempts to merge each Attachment into a single resulting PDF. The method signature to call is:

Attachment/Generate?Object={Object}&ObjectID={ObjectID}&Template={AttachmentTemlate}[&ThrowOnError={bool}]

where {AttachmentTemplate} used the plugin PDFMerge.

Optional Parameters:
  • ThrowOnError: if true, encountering an invalid document will throw an error. If false, no error is thrown
Application settings:
  • MergeThrowOnError: (False) if true, encountering an invalid document will throw an error. If false, no error is thrown
  • MergeErrorSourceStatus: (Invalid Format) the status to set a source document to if the source document cannot be merged into a PDF
  • MergeErrorStatus: (Invalid Format) the status to set the merged document to if any source documents cannot be merged into a PDF

Technical notes

For developers doing deployments:
  • Breaking Change: the URLtoPDF plugin has been moved to it's own project / plugin, since the install includes Firefox
    • Config/Generators.config may reference the old URLToPDF plugin. It must be removed.
    • Deploying FireFox for installs that don't use URLtoPDF is unnecessary overhead
  • The references to ABCPDF now uses NuGET, instead of needing to install the software outside of a build process
  • These plugins have been removed from the qbo.Core.sln, migrated to qbo.ABCPDF
    • Getting the ABCPDF NuGET package should be done from the ABCPDF solution
    • The folder structure has been cleaned up

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