PDF Generation Help needed

Question

Hi,

I am brandnew to PDF Generation or rendering but have a project to, create a PDF Template system that allows users to save Template to Database, and later generate a PDF document using the template and values from my database.

Language to use C#

Questions

a) Is there a PDF tool out there that can help me with this and documentation I can study to learn of this? b) Are there free tools out there for this? c) How do I create a PDF Template? XML?

Thanks in Advance!

Answer 1

You should have a look at xsl:fo. Apache has a tool which might be helpful.

Answer 2

You can use PHP to create and modify PDFs. (Everything below is completely free.)

Here are two extensive tutorials on generating PDFs in PHP:

http://blog.eirikhoem.net/index.php/2008/04/28/populate-pdf-templates-with-php-fpdf-fpdi/

http://www.astahost.com/info.php/create-pdf-php_t4972.html

You can use the FPDF library located here to handle generating PDFs based off of templates.

Answer 3

If You are using Java, you could try Docmosis or JODReports - they work from templates and can produce PDF output dynamically based on data and those templates. Depending on your template requirements, you might also be able to use Jasper Reports or Apache POI. All have free versions.