What happened to the PDF Module?

Back in April 2007 i told about the PDF Module for Sitecore, but since then things got quiet around the topic. What happened?
Well, the module is finished, including a manual and API descriptions. It’s just isn’t available through the official Sitecore channels. Here in Pentia A/S we are using it, and it’s running fine.

 

You can use the module for 2 different things. The simple mode is to generate PDF documents from HTML content. This is done by creating a PDF layout (a Sitecore item) and calling the layout with the ID of the page to render as PDF. The layout then uses the “PDF” device of the item to render as input for the text to generate.

A PDF layout contains the paper size, margins and layers for one PDF page. Layers are used for creating headers, footers and watermarks as they are rendered on each page. A layer can be a text, page numbers, a line, an image, an URL and so on.

From HTML to PDF

The advanced mode is used for creating customized PDF books, where the web site user choose the chapters to include in his own book. The book is then compiled from the choices made and a PDF complete with front page, table of contents, page numbers a.s.o is generated.

In the advanced mode, chapters are pre-rendered on publish time together with a table of contents for that chapter. Generating a book is therefore very fast. We create 800 page books in less than 10 seconds. Downloading the book is the slow part here. 

PDF Book Generator

I hope that the module will be available through Sitecore some day. Untill then, you’ll have to contact Pentia A/S if you are interested in hearing more.