How can I convert one slide of a PowerPoint file to flash in jsf app (using javaSE/javaEE)?

Question

I need to show the first slide of a PowerPoint presentation in my jsf app. It must look something like that:

• user upload the .ppt file to jsf app
• the app take the first slide and converts it to Flash
• user sees the converted slide in the separate (not as part of the another page)

I suppose that I couldn't use any external converters because the user of the system will not have them when he uses our system.

Also I'm thinkinig about Flash, not HTML, because the presentation can be dynamic.

Any ideas? Can I do this task or it's impossible and I need to think in another way (maybe restriction for end users - to save presentation as png, but I think that my boss won't like this decision).

Maybe I need to look at .xslt format, maybe it would help?

Answer 1

suppose that I couldn't use any external converters because the user of the system will not have them when he uses our system.

You can truly use external tools since your Java/JSF code runs at the webserver, not at the webclient (webbrowser). All the webbrowser get is just the Java/JSF-generated HTML/CSS/JS code. Open a page in webbrowser, rightclick and View Source and see it yourself. You just install the external tool at the webserver and execute it there.

To upload a file in JSF, you'll need to grab a 3rd party component library since the standard implementation doesn't have an upload component, for example Tomahawk's t:inputFileUpload or the one of whatever component library you're currently already using.

To convert PPT to Flash, execute the appropriate action using external tool in the managed bean action method and store the Flash file somewhere in the local disk file system of the webserver. You can store it in the public webcontent so that it's directly accessible by URL, but those files will be lost whenever you redeploy the webapp. If this shouldn't happen, then store it outside the public webcontent.

I don't have hands on experience with PPT-Flash converters, so I can't recommend a specific one, but Google learns me that there's pretty a lot of choice. There seems to be a Java solution of iSpring.

To display the Flash file, use the HTML <object> element which points to the URL of the Flash file. If the Flash file is stored outside the public webcontent, then you'll need to create a Servlet which gets an InputStream of the file from the local disk file system and writes it to the OutputStream of the response along a correct set of HTTP headers and then let the URL of the <object> element point to that instead.