We are trying to create a Visio project file and to process it with an external tool to generate a json file that a web app can read to create a decision tree based on the json contents.
We know about 3rd parties to automate MS Word files but no idea if there are others dealing with Visio files.
Google didn't return anything valid as per Automation it always returns links to how to program macros on it.
Any help will be appreciated.
There are many ways to automate Visio: macros, .net plugins, python, pascal, even windows powershell.
But if your final aim is getting Visio to the web, you may try the following link.
http://unmanagedvisio.com/category/svgexport/
The tool exports the drawing to an SVG embedded in an HTML file with Javascript functionality. Definitely worth a look.
I want to create a software using visual basic which reads some text in a PDF file (name on an invoice), and then creates a folder using that name. Is this possible to do, and how would I get started on this? I have programming experience in the past.
PDFs are difficult to manipulate. To do it efficiently, you'd need some libraries that allow you to open the PDFs and extract the text from it.
I haven't used VB much, but I don't expect that there will be much support for PDFs.
You are probably better off using a language like Python, which has a lot of support for PDFs.
See for instance:
- http://www.binpress.com/tutorial/manipulating-pdfs-with-python/167
- https://pypi.python.org/pypi?:action=search&term=parse+pdf&submit=search
The first link also contains a few tutorials.
I would like for people to be able to debug my library, should they feel like they want to.
For this I think a good idea would be to embed the source in the library / framework itself. Does Xcode support this option?
For reference of what I’m looking for, in Java you can build a Jar file which comes with the attached source code (and optional javadoc) embedded within the library https://stackoverflow.com/a/5064833/48062
Xcode does not support this option, no. Your best bet would be to upload the source to Github (https://github.com) and include the link in your documentation for the framework. That way you can be sure that your users can always get to the freshest, most up to date, code.
I am looking for some good tools (free or paid, though free tool is always preferred)
for doing following operations on word doc files:
Manipulation of doc/docx/text files (like replacing some placeholders with DB values) as well as
converts doc files to .pdf
Because, I will be using this tool in my WCF service library,
So I am looking for a code library and not for a GUI based product.
Please share your experience regarding same.
Thank you!
Aspose has a decent collection of MS Office and PDF manipulation libraries.
Aspose Homepage
On the off chance that you're only looking for PDFs for viewing or archival purposes, you could also setup a PDF print driver and print your office files into a given location using Automation. You could also edit Office files through Automation although this may be tedious.
VSTO would give you access to the save as PDF from the Office applications.
Please see my answer to a related question on SO where I recommend a number of ways to convert your Word document to a format that is more easy to manipulate programmatically (using XSL-FO).
We are developing a little application that given a directory with PDF files creates a unique PDF file containing all the PDF files in the directory. This is a simple task using iTextSharp. The problem appears if in the directory exist some files like Word documents, or Excel documents.
My question is, is there a way to convert word, excel documents into PDF programmatically? And even better, is this possible without having the office suite installed on the computer running the application?
Office 2007 allows for this. I have found PDFCreator to be good, the VBA is included in sample files, and have heard that CutePDF is also good. PDFCreator and CutePDF are free.
To work without Office, you would need viewers, as far as I know:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c8378bf4-996c-4569-b547-75edbd03aaf0&displaylang=EN
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=95E24C87-8732-48D5-8689-AB826E7B8FDF&displaylang=en
I needed to do this myself, but managed to get it done with .Net and without 3rd party tools:
MSDN: Saving Word 2007 Documents to PDF and XPS Formats
Pretty simple, about 50 lines of code. However I think you will need Word 2007 installed on the machine as well as the ability to Save As PDF
To convert Word documents to PDF, take a look at jWordConvert, a java library that can do exactly that. This will not work with the Excel files though, only with the Word files. The language is not Sharp, it's Java but you could switch to use IText (which is java) instead of ITextSharp.
You can also use a component like activePDF's DocConverter to convert a lot formats to PDF.
Use PDF maker that comes with adobe 7- 9
I just used this code Covert Doc to PDF
I'm surprised Aspose wasn't mentioned here, it's easy, simple, and reliable. Downside is that it is not free.
I've used iTextSharp in the past, it's really good, easy to install (one DLL I believe), the merge takes a bit of tindering so it's not as easy to use as Aspose, but hey, it's free so that is the best part.
TallPDF.NET (comes with a hefty price tag) allows you to serve dynamic PDF from any .NET application including ASP.NET pages and web services.
PDFEdit (free and open source) is an editor for manipulating PDF documents. It has a GUI version and a command-line interface. Scripting is used to a great extent in the editor and almost anything can be scripted. It is possible to create your own scripts or plugins.
The most common way to convert files to a pdf is to print them to a pdf printer driver. There are a number of such drivers, one that i know of that will do the job is Black Ice.
Another is to use Adobe Acrobat's SDK. from memory its very expensive.
Its been a while since i have actually done any work with converting pdf's and the landscape may have changed.