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flow79Flag for United States of America

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HTML to PDF

My company is looking for a way to automatically convert its sales reports (normally HTML) to  PDF files, and send it to a seperate drive on the network (acts as an archive).  How would I accomplish this?
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Karl Heinz Kremer
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Define "automatically". Depending on your definition, you may be able to use Adobe Acrobat (or not). Acrobat is not licensed for unattended/server use. If you have somebody sit at the console and start the process, you are probably OK.
Acrobat has a "HTML->PDF" converter built in, and you can utilize and automate it via JavaScript (with the doc.getURL() call).

If you need to do this without human intervention, you need to look to 3rd party tools. They go from free to pretty expensive :-) At the free end, you'll find e.g. HTMLDOC (http://www.easysw.com/htmldoc/). A commercial alternative is activePDF's WebGrabber (http://www.activepdf.com/en/Products/WebGrabber/Start.asp)
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ASKER

The basic situation is that I am programming our new online sales system in ASP.  The last page of the application is a report which will go to our engineering department which covers all of the components, accessories, and options the user has picked for his/her product.  We want this page to be viewable on the web, archiveable as pdf, and printable (mostly just stay as HTML).  

I hope this gives you a better understanding of what we're looking for.  THanks!
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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kar10s

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Karl10s' suggestion is certainly an option. You could create the PDF on the fly and use this for display/storage/print. However, if you want to take the HTML as basis, and just convert it to PDF, I guess your best option is the WebGrabber. I'ts a COM object, so you can use it directly from your ASP site. Check out the description on the activePDF web site and see if this makes sense to you.
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kar10s

Hi,

Yes it is other option. With ABCpdf, you can do the same. Have you try the live demo? http://64.39.14.230/abcpdf-com/#

see where say:

Add Web Page - draw a web page.
and then
Show PDF - show the PDF in a browser window.

So you could put a botton on your asp page or use a event for create the pdf file from the HTML page.

Regards
Kar10s
Avatar of flow79

ASKER

Just so youre all aware...I accepted the answer from Kar10s.  ABCpdf is a fanstastic solution which is simple to implement.

Thanks Kar10s!
Not at all.
Thank you
khkremer- could you please explain how I could implement your proposed solution if there were someone sitting at the terminal. How does one automate it using JavaScript?

thanks!
dan
Dan, please don't ask more questions in already closed questions. Please open up a new question. This way you will have more people who can see your question (if you post here, only the participants in this question will see your question).
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ASKER

crippe420, aka Dan,
     It is not fair to ask a question within someone else's question.  Each of us has to use our points to ask questions, and piggybacking on my question is unfair to me.  Please try to follow policy in the future and be fair about your usage of the site.

Thanks!

Dan