I am wondering if it would be possible to build a print service using the chromium project source code. The idea would be people clicking a print button on our web page would send a call to this service which would return a PDF rendering of the page?
Yes, on the server side you have a CGI script to do the conversion. You can reply with a link to the document, or you can e-mail it. You need to ensure the user spaces are kept separate and that the documents are kept on the server long enough for them to download.
Or you can rely on the observation that many people have PDF output pseudo-devices and can print the page locally.
Related
I have a client who wants me to automate certain document processing work.
There is this pdf that can only be opened by sending in username and password to a DRM server.
When I open it using Acrobat, I see this.
I have the username and password, courtesy of the client.
Issue is how do I automate this?
I have done web scraping before, where I automate a web login so that I can execute certain routine tasks.
But this is the first time I am trying to automate an authentication that does not occur inside the browser.
How do I go about doing this?
Companies pay a lot of money to do exactly not this. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/reader/topic_drm.html. I suspect the amount of effort to do this will not be worth it, especially if you are going to try and dive into the actual protocols/plugins used and hook in directly. This would be very implementations specific and likely to break in the future.
Your best bet is to leverage the existing Adobe Application and wrap it in an Automator script. Unfortunately, OSX specific.
They won't have generic workflow hooks, so the quick and nasty way would be to just record yourself doing it once, and play it back time and time again.
Workflow:
Drag PDF onto custom app
Automatically populate username
Automatically populate password
If you are looking for somewhere to start: http://www.macosxautomation.com/automator/features/virtual-user.html
The DRM module itself can set permissions about how you can print and re-distribute the files itself, you won't be able to get around any of that, but assuming you have all the permissions set correctly, you should at least be able to automate opening the file itself on OSX.
This is for ASP.Net website.
When user selects remote documents(pdfs) present on server and clicks print, we need to show the print dialog where user can choose which printer to print to.
The methods which we have tried are:
1. Merge all pdfs, load the resultant on a new window/iframe and invoke print command- The obvious issue here is it takes lots of time when the documents are very large.
Aspose pdf print code / Foxit print code - These require some printer to be installed on the IIS server, which is not feasible for us to do.
neodynamic - This requires an exe to be installed on client as well, which is not good for us.
Can someone suggest alternatives or what else can be tried?
Is there something obvious that we are missing here?
We heard about browser helper objects, if building these have worked for someone, please help.
My application, written in VB.Net 4.5 and deployed using ClickOnce, gets information through parameters when it is opened via the link on a website. The application uses that information to modify data collected from hardware connected to a virtual serial port. The data is usually on the order of a 3-15 kilobytes of plain text. The data then needs to return to the page (in a text box), and the page submitted, at which point the application closes.
Previously, the page used a Java applet, but increased Java security has made upkeep very time consuming.
Is it possible for the application to send data back to the same web page, still open in the browser, and submit that page?
If not, what would the simplest way for the application to send its data to the webserver, knowing that it needs user credentials (and a few other pieces of data) to do so?
You can make a post to the webpage from your application. See the WebRequest object
I am working on a study that sends people a PDF document with information about their health. The team would like to know if the person has actually opened the PDF document (a sign that they didn't just ignore the e-mail). I know that it'd be possible to do it with a link to an external file, but the users are much less likely to click on a URL and download it then they are to just view an attachment, and we don't want to do anything that might prevent the users from reading the information (we've already had people say they never received the message, and with further investigation they discovered they had, they had just ignored it).
Another option is to request a read report, but this is only useful if it doesn't annoy the user (ie it does it automatically when the email is opened instead of requesting them to send one). We're currently looking into this as well, but the ability to check if the attachment has been opened is a much better idea.
The email is generated in MS SQL and sent using the database mail system, and we have adobe acrobat pro, so creating scripts in pdfs is possible (although I'm not sure whether those scripts will be allowed to run).
Thanks
1) Dont include the PDF in the email, include a link to the PDF.
or
2) Include a javascript snippet in the PDF, which hits a per-user URL or includes IP address or something to track. This will only work if the user allows javascript, and if their pdf reader supports it.
See
http://ask.metafilter.com/153206/Is-it-possible-to-track-where-a-PDF-file-goes-once-in-the-wild
Since this was originally posted there has been a number of consumer tools that now let you track PDF's sent via a web link.
http://docsend.com , http://attach.io
and if you're sharing from Dropbox
http://orangedox.com
Much easier than having to script it yourself
At this time there are a number of tools available who offer attachment tracking service to their users. I am also using SalesHandy for attachment tracking and get the deep analysis of when & where your attachment is open.
Click to read more: https://www.saleshandy.com/document-tracking/
I'm a little lost on how to achieve this problem.
We have a list of files brought into a app linking to the files stored on a remote server. Currently when the file is selected in the list, it opens up within safari which is fine. Once the file loads in safari you do have the option for forward from there, but my client wants to be able to it from within the app, rather than opening in safari.
We are using query mobile and phone gap to create the app. I was thinking about just creating a new mail, with a link to the file embedded in to the email.
Any ideas or help is welcome on this.
You may be much better off if you just have the mobile app make an Ajax call to the server to trigger the sending of the email and attachments? That would really reduce the complexity off the mobile app and decouple you from any issues that might occur based on different hardware or OS's.
So when the user is viewing the list of files, maybe offer them two buttons. View and Send. View would open in Safari as intended, Send would make a call to the server to do the heavy work.
http://yourserver.com/sendFilesToRecipient?file_id=XX&email_address=target#email.com
Then the server loads the correct file and sends it out, maybe responding the client app with a success/failure message.
Would that type of design solve the issue?
I have created a link:
Open File<br/>Email File
Which has seemed to do the job, opens up the default email client, with the set values in them.