Mass creation of PDFs with VB6 - HELP!!

[iowa_...@hotmail.com]

Hi everyone,

First, here is what we have now:

Our company usually sends stock holders their certificate information
in a PDF doc. To do this, we start out with roughly 30 standardized
PDFs. We then use a little in house VB6 ap that generates an FDF file
with the client specific data from an SQL DB and determines which of
the standardized pdfs to associate with it, then saves this FDF file to
the drive. The account rep in the office then brings up the fdf file
(which of course opens acrobat 6, which we have a full version of) and
has the complete pdf, with the form fields filled in. This then gets
mailed out.

Now here is my problem:
Our company is not going to use the above system anymore. They now want
a massive folder with all the pdfs already made, with the client
specific data inserted. They are going to start making the new ones
this way, but we have to get the older certificate pdfs onto the drive
as well. So, basically, I have to find a way to generate all the PDFs.

Here is what I started doing. I have a VB6 ap that can hit the
database, get our clients and the client specific info, loop through,
and create a BUNCH of FDF files and then save them to the drive. What I
WANT to do, is use this new VB6 ap I'm making to generate the FDF file,
put it into the PDF file and save the new PDF that now has the client
specified data in it to the drive.

Is there a way to do this in VB? Please help!

[Bob Babcock]

iowa_...@hotmail.com wrote in
news:1168543224....@o58g2000hsb.googlegroups.com:

> What I
> WANT to do, is use this new VB6 ap I'm making to generate the FDF file,
> put it into the PDF file and save the new PDF that now has the client
> specified data in it to the drive.
>
> Is there a way to do this in VB? Please help!

Perhaps your VB program can call PDF Toolkit from
http://www.pdfhacks.com/pdftk/
One of the things PDF Toolkit can do is fill a form with fdf data and save
the result as either a fillable form or a simple pdf. PDF Toolkit is based
on iText, a Java library (C# version also available). You can do more with
iText, but you probably don't want to change languages in the middle of
your project.

[Bruno Lowagie]

Bob Babcock wrote:
> You can do more with
> iText, but you probably don't want to change languages in the middle of
> your project.

You could wrap iText in a COM object.
See http://manning-sandbox.com/thread.jspa?threadID=17281
br,
Bruno

[chicks]

You'll find a DLL here:

http://www.esnips.com/web/PDFTools?docsPage=3#files

It is a compiled version of the excellent iText library, exposing the
fdf merge functionality, with optional flattening. An PowerBASIC usage
example is included, should be as easy to use from VB6.

[iowa_...@hotmail.com]

*** UPDATE ***

Hi all,

First I want to thank you guys for the help. You REALLY saved my butt!

I ended up using the pdftk in vb6 to do the mass creation. In the end,
the ap I wrote successfully built a grand total of 27,307 production
ready pdfs based off of 22 seperate static PDFs that contained form
fields. This was done in about 5 hours of processing time.

Again, thanks for all the help!

[Bill Segraves]

<iowa_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1169152250.4...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

As you have probably discovered, Pdftk is built from iText, a Java library
for creation/manipulation of PDFs. iText is available free from
www.lowagie.com/iText/. At some point, you may have a need for more than
Pdftk can do for you.

Bruno Lowagie's book _iText in Action_, available from
www.manning.com/lowagie in both print and ebook editions, together with the
Tutorials at the above site and the examples at the author's iText support
site, may provide valuable additions to your capabilities.

Cheers,

--
Bill Segraves

[vishal...@gmail.com]

Hi All,

I work for a company that has a product that will allow you to create
PDF documents programatically from scratch using VB and and fill the
form fields on any existing PDF documents using the data coming from
the database. The company name is ceTe Software and the name of the
product is DynamicPDF Merger for COM/ActiveX. Following is the link to
the download of fully functional evaluation version
http://www.cete.com/Products/MergerForCOM/Download.csp. Look at the
AcroFormFill example which shows how to take an existing PDF document
with form fields and fill the form fields. The examples are downloaded
with the product download.

Vishal Mehta

[iowa_...@hotmail.com]

Bill Segraves wrote:
> As you have probably discovered, Pdftk is built from iText, a Java library
> for creation/manipulation of PDFs. iText is available free from
> www.lowagie.com/iText/. At some point, you may have a need for more than
> Pdftk can do for you.

You're right. I'm actually looking at his stuff. When I was writing the
ap I was under a severe time crunch and needed a solutions yesterday,
so I went with the pdftk.

In the long run, iText looks like the way to go.