Nate Nelson

Here's how to put your knowledge of HTML to work by creating free PDFs with FOP (Formatting Objects Processor). In the May issue of CFDJ, I covered the basics of utilizing FOP from Apache to dynamically create free PDFs in your ColdFusion application. If you enjoyed that article you will certainly enjoy this one as we dive deeper into the capabilities of this process. After reading both articles you should be able to not only generate free PDFs but also to display presentable results simply by using the HTML that you already know. In this article I will demonstrate how to do this by further defining XSLT and XSL-FO. A Quick Recap In part 1 of this article, available at www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=44771&DE=1 , I covered everything you need to know in order to create your first free dynamic PDF using CF, including an introduction to FOP, how to generate and transfo... (more)

Creating Free PDFs from Your CF Application

I'm sure most of you have been in a situation where either your employer or customer doesn't like the way content from a Web browser looks when printed. There are many ways to provide printable content, but one of the most popular formats of printable material is PDF format. There are many solutions to creating PDF documents from your ColdFusion application, but they all cost money right? Some PDF solutions are not cheap at all and maybe cost isn't the only issue. Maybe you want to do it yourself without using a CFX tag. What if I told you there was a way to create PDFs from CF ... (more)