How do you create the PDF of the ward directory?

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mesmith
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How do you create the PDF of the ward directory?

#1

Post by mesmith »

My boss wants to create a website that will create a PDF (printable) copy of some of the data. I know that church does exactly what I want to do in the printing of the ward directory. I have searched the internet and find a lot of information but none of it seems to relate directly to what the church is doing, which is what I want to do. So, my question is

What technology do you use to create the server side PDF that the user can then print on the client side?

Thank you in advance.
jdlessley
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Re: How do you create the PDF of the ward directory?

#2

Post by jdlessley »

The PDF is created in part using an API, or more than one APIs, to access the data from the Church servers. The distribution of APIs is limited to officially sanctioned projects.
JD Lessley
Have you tried finding your answer on the ChurchofJesusChrist.org Help Center or Tech Wiki?
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mesmith
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Re: How do you create the PDF of the ward directory?

#3

Post by mesmith »

jdlessley wrote:The PDF is created in part using an API, or more than one APIs, to access the data from the Church servers. The distribution of APIs is limited to officially sanctioned projects.
So, this is a custom solution to create the PDF?

I was hoping that you are using an off-the-shelf API to create the PDF that can be purchased by anyone.

Okay, back to the drawing board.
russellhltn
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Re: How do you create the PDF of the ward directory?

#4

Post by russellhltn »

I think JD thought you were wanting to make a PDF of church data, not just an understanding of the technology behind the process.
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.

So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
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mesmith
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Re: How do you create the PDF of the ward directory?

#5

Post by mesmith »

russellhltn wrote:I think JD thought you were wanting to make a PDF of church data, not just an understanding of the technology behind the process.
You are correct. I am looking for instruction in the methodology of how one would do this. I did find a white paper that described using a PDF library combined with a LaTeX library to produce a PDF for consistent printing.

I am still looking for ideas if anyone has any.
jonesrk
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Re: How do you create the PDF of the ward directory?

#6

Post by jonesrk »

http://wkhtmltopdf.org/ is one tool that you can use in your code to do this.
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mesmith
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Re: How do you create the PDF of the ward directory?

#7

Post by mesmith »

jonesrk wrote:http://wkhtmltopdf.org/ is one tool that you can use in your code to do this.
Thank you. This one I liked. I played with it for a short time and it looks like it works great.

Note to other readers:
This solution provides a precompiled binary that will work on windows. You will have to download the source and compile it on any other platform (Linux, Mac) you may want to use.
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