What's the simplest way to migrate from DocPub to PDFNet?

[Aaron]

Q:

I've been developing a proof-of-concept project using DocPub.  But after going to through the licensing process, it seems that PDFNet would be a better fit for us.  But now I need to go back and change all of my code to use PDFNet instead of DocPub.  What's the easiest/quickest way to get that done?

A:

The easiest way to rewrite your code using DocPub is to create a simple command-line program that only performs your specific conversions.

If you download PDFNet SDK, then on every platform you can compile the Samples/WebViewerConvertTest project out of the box.  On OS X and Linux, you simply need to go into Samples/WebViewerConvertTest/CPP and run "make" at the command line.  Then WebViewerConvertTest will be runnable at the command line just like DocPub.

So that you can pass file paths into this command-line, please replace the content of WebViewerConvertTest.cpp with the following (then run make again):

#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
#include <PDF/PDFNet.h>
#include <PDF/Convert.h>

using namespace pdftron;
using namespace PDF;
using namespace std;

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    if (argc != 3)
    {
        std::cout << "Syntax: WebViewerConvertTest input.pdf output.xod" << std::endl;
        return 2;
    }


    int err = 0;
    try
    {
        const char* szInput = argv[1];
        const char* szOutput = argv[2];

        PDFNet::Initialize();
        // https://www.pdftron.com/pdfnet/docs/PDFNetC/d0/d30/classpdftron_1_1_p_d_f_1_1_convert_1_1_x_o_d_output_options.html
        // https://www.pdftron.com/pdfnet/docs/PDFNetC/d3/d99/classpdftron_1_1_p_d_f_1_1_convert_1_1_x_p_s_output_common_options.html
        Convert::XODOutputOptions xod_options;
        //xod_options.SetPreferJPG(true);
        //xod_options.SetDPI(200);
        Convert::ToXod(szInput, szOutput, xod_options);
    }
    catch(Common::Exception& e)
    {
        std::cout << e << std::endl;
        err = 1;
    }

    catch(std::exception& e)
    {
        std::cout << e.what() << std::endl;
        err = 1;
    }
    catch(...)
    {
        std::cout << "Unknown Exception" << std::endl;
        err = 1;
    }


    std::cout << "Done.\n";
    return err;
}

Once you have a PDFNet license, you can pass it in as a string into PDFNet::Initialize().

[Aaron]

Note that you can change this code sample, perhaps taking code from the samples at https://www.pdftron.com/pdfnet/samplecode.html.  For example, you can use a few lines from the sample at https://www.pdftron.com/pdfnet/samplecode.html#Word2PDF to change the code sample to convert DOC/DOCX/PPTX documents to PDF:

#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
#include <PDF/PDFNet.h>
#include <PDF/Convert.h>

using namespace pdftron;
using namespace PDF;
using namespace std;

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    if (argc != 3)
    {
        std::cout << "Syntax: WebViewerConvertTest input.pdf output.xod" << std::endl;
        return 2;
    }

    int err = 0;
    try
    {
        const char* szInput = argv[1];
        const char* szOutput = argv[2];


        PDFNet::Initialize();

        PDFDoc pdfdoc;
        Convert::WordToPDF(pdfdoc, szInput, NULL);
        pdfdoc.Save(szOutput, SDF::SDFDoc::e_linearized, NULL);
    }
    catch (Common::Exception& e)

    {
        std::cout << e << std::endl;
        err = 1;
    }

    catch (std::exception& e)

    {
        std::cout << e << std::endl;
        err = 1;
    }

    catch (...)