LiveDocx in PHP

Following the server maintenance yesterday, a minor update to the backend service LiveDocx has just been rolled out. phpLiveDocx has been updated correspondingly.

The four changes in LiveDocx 1.1 and phpLiveDocx 1.1-20090527 are:

SSL encryption is mandatory

When SSL encryption was enabled on the LiveDocx server last month, many users wrote us expressing their appreciation. In the following days, we received more e-mail generally saying that SSL should not be an option, but mandatory. Hence, with the goal of assisting PHP users to develop secure applications, all traffic between phpLiveDocx and LiveDocx is now encrypted using SSL. SSL can no longer be deactivated.

PDF files are much smaller

Many users expressed concern about the size of PDF files, produced by phpLiveDocx. The root of this problem could be traced back to a specific PDF export filter used by the underlying technology, which powers LiveDocx. In the meantime, this issue has been fixed and the produced PDF files are now much smaller.

New merge fields are available

The backend service LiveDocx runs on a technology called TX Text Control. Recently, TX Text Control 15.0 was released, which now supports a number of new merge field types. These merge fields (listed below) are now available in LiveDocx:

• MERGEFIELD
• DATE
• IF
• INCLUDETEXT

Additionally, a new merge field is populated automatically at the end of the merge process. It contains the total number of pages in the resulting document.

• NUMPAGES

I will post some examples, which use these new merge fields in the coming days.

Unit tests with PHPUnit

To ensure the high quality of phpLiveDocx remains thought the current and all future versions, full unit testing has been added. Take a look at the directory phplivedocx/tests in the downloadable distribution file. To start the tests, ensure you have PHPUnit installed (via PEAR) and run phplivedocx/run-tests.sh. The unit tests are written against PHPUnit 3.3.16.

Update now

The latest version of phpLiveDocx is a drop in replacement for the old version. Only in the case that you explicitly turned off SSL encryption in the constructor, do you need to delete the third parameter of the constructor. Remember: SSL encryption is now mandatory!

Download phpLiveDocx.