Question

Flex 2, display URLLoader result data (PDF document) in html page

Asked by: ecomaster

Hi,

I'm working on an existing PHP application, where on of the features involves generating PDF documents from various data in the (MySQL) DB, by calling a php page, that outputs the generated PDF document. Depending on the amount of data, this can take a long time.
So I thought about using a small Flex application to load the pdf document (URLlLoader), and retrieve the progress of the PDF generation until the page is loaded. Afterwards the document must be displayed to the user, preferably in the html page containing the Flex swf. Is there a way to pass the result data to the containing html page? If not, can it be displayed in the flex application itself?

Regards,
Wim.

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Asked On
2007-10-15 at 15:39:39ID22894899
Tags

flex

,

pdf

,

display

,

html

,

page

Topics

Adobe Flex

,

PHP Scripting Language

,

WebApplications

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: vickerleungPosted on 2007-10-16 at 00:58:24ID: 20083765

Hi Wim,

I don't think Flex can keep track of your PDF creation process. (I mean having a progress bar with percentage complete) It can only track PDF loading (download) progress, however Flex itself can not show PDF document, so track loading is useless in that case.

Flex itself can talk with the HTML container using JavaScript and External API. So it is possible that Flex call HTML with variable passing. However based on the point that Flex completely loaded a PDF not equals to the HTML can use that cached PDF, so I don't think this approach is possible. (Flex and Browser's data cache position might be different).

Though... I don't think loading PDF inside Flex will be far away from now. They are all Adobe's product.

Cheers
Vicker

 

by: ll_jaxnPosted on 2007-10-19 at 07:38:47ID: 20109222

To make this work anyway, you have to have the adobe applet to view the pdf, so maybe Flex can set a variable like a symophor, that a javascript timerpop is waiting for and either the javascript or FLEX can set the content/src value of the applet to the newly downloaded element holding the PDF.

 

by: vickerleungPosted on 2007-10-19 at 07:45:04ID: 20109272

Hi Wim,

Recently come across with AlivePDF in Google Code - a actionscript library to generate pdf in Flash / Flex applications. You might be interested in it.

I will try to browse it to see if there is a way for this library to keep track the building progress.

Cheers
Vicker

 

by: vickerleungPosted on 2007-10-19 at 07:45:30ID: 20109279

Hi Wim,

Missing URL:
http://www.alivepdf.org/

Cheers
Vicker

 

by: shivaspkPosted on 2007-11-10 at 20:29:19ID: 20258088

As the PHP application which generates the PDF is in place, what I can suggest is to use a java script "loading" display which will be lighter when compared to flash (flex2) loading. Using flex 2 is not that simple in this case as we clearly don't know how long it may take to construct the PDF.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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