The final step of the tutorial is not directly relevant to this blog, but the first two steps are. To see some PHP code that illustrates how to populate templates with LiveDocx, using the Zend Framework, please take a look at this article: Brief introduction to LiveDocx in PHP.

If you have any questions about the video or need help using LiveDocx, please do not hesitate to use the comment section below.

Thank you Björn for a very easy-to-follow video tutorial.

As LiveDocx is a SOAP service, it is possible to use LiveDocx in any programming language that supports SOAP. Python supports SOAP, hence LiveDocx may be used in Python. However, it is always easiest, if a native adapter is available.

Radoslaw Benkel (@singlespl) has recently published such a native adapter, which makes using LiveDocx in Python a breeze.

Take a look a his GitHub repository for details:
https://github.com/singles/python_livedocx

To use this library, all you have to do is as follows:

from livedocx import LiveDocx
 
ld = LiveDocx()
ld.login('username', 'password')
ld.set_local_template('path/to/template.doc')
 
ld.assign_value('software', 'python_livedocx')
ld.assign_value('license', 'MIT')
 
ld.create_document()
 
data = ld.retrieve_document('PDF')
 
file = open('software info.pdf', 'wb')
file.write(data)
file.close()

If anyone else has written libraries to use LiveDocx in Python and would be willing to share details, please post a comment below.

Thank you, Radoslaw Benkel, for your contribution to the LiveDocx community.

An oft underestimated feature of LiveDocx is support for the Microsoft Word INCLUDETEXT field type, which allows templates to be chained together into one larger template. The entire contents of the sub-templates are brought into the main template in the order in which the fields are inserted, during the merge process. The final document contains the contents of the template and all sub-templates.

To learn more about INCLUDETEXT and how to insert INCLUDETEXT fields into your template, please take a look the following articles:

• WD2000: How to Create a Long Document in Word, Section IncludeText Field

• Using IncludeText Fields – Part 1: Creating Templates

• Using IncludeText Fields – Part 2: Putting It All To Work

Zend\Service\LiveDocx\MailMerge provides two methods to control how or whether sub-templates are included in the main template.

In the default state, all templates, which are referenced in INCLUDETEXT fields are included during the merge process.

If you do not want this to be the case, the method setIgnoreSubTemplates() can be set to true. This disables the inclusion of all sub-templates during the merge process. Using the free public LiveDocx service, you cannot selectively define which templates should be included. It is an all-or-nothing approach.

The premium and licensed versions of the LiveDocx service, on the other hand, allow for more fine grained control. These versions provide the method setSubTemplateIgnoreList(), which takes an array of filenames that should not be included. This way, you can, for example, included sub-templates 2 and 5, but not 1, 3 and 4.

The methods setIgnoreSubTemplates() and setSubTemplateIgnoreList() will be part of Zend Framework 2 when it ships. The latest code updates should be merged into master on the Zend canonical repository within the next few weeks. For the time being, the code is still in my GitHub repository, in the branch livedocx-2.0.

You can clone the latest code at:
https://github.com/jonathanmaron/zf2/tree/livedocx-2.0

Take a look at the following directory for some demonstration applications that illustrate the methods setIgnoreSubTemplates() and setSubTemplateIgnoreList()

/demos/Zend/Service/LiveDocx/MailMerge/templates-ignore/

Feel free to contact me, using the comments section below, if you need any help, or notice any inconsistencies in the code.

June 10, 2011: The code updates mentioned in this post have now been merged into master on the Zend canonical repository.

You can clone the latest code at:
https://github.com/jonathanmaron/zf2/tree/livedocx-2.0

What’s new in this version?

• Exception handling has been migrated to ZF2 practices i.e. Exception/RuntimeException and Exception/InvalidArgumentException.

• Exceptions from the backend service now contain only the message from the backend service. The backend engineers requested this be the case, as it aides support cases.

• The inline documentation has been updated.

• The methods logIn() and logOut() are now protected in scope.

• The methods setIsLoggedIn() and getIsLoggedIn() were added.

• The quality and coverage of unit tests have been vastly improved (63 tests, 203 assertions).

You are welcome to clone the repository and try out the new code for yourself. Feel free to contact me, using the comments section below, if you need any help, or notice any inconsistencies in the code.

June 10, 2011: The code updates mentioned in this post have now been merged into master on the Zend canonical repository.

Why am I forbidden from using the LiveDocx service? What have I done wrong?
I keep getting an Exception, with the message HTTP Error 403 Forbidden.

To be fair, this error message is not great and I will lobby the backend engineers to make it more explicit. But what does it mean?

It means that you are trying to perform one of the following:

• More than 1 concurrent request.

• More than 100 requests in any 60 second period.

The free public service has to restrict usage to ensure that all users get a fair share of the service.

These limitations do not apply to the premium or licensed LiveDocx products.

The article shows, in a step-by-step fashion, how to use the current version of Microsoft Word to create templates. Although, the article looks at how the templates can be loaded by TX Text Control .NET Server for Windows Forms and WPF, exactly the same templates can be loaded by LiveDocx.

The following screenshot show some merge fields in the template:

Thank you Björn for the excellent tutorial!

Have you ever tried to create a professional quality document programmatically from within PHP? It’s a real pain and surprisingly tricky to do. There are limited options for PHP developers to produce files in the formats most often used in business. There are libraries for producing PDF files in PHP but they are complex and are difficult to use for producing documents.

Read the full text at:

• Creating Professional Documents the Easy Way

Julien Pauli has just published a great commentary about Zend_Service_LiveDocx, comparing it to his library odtphp. If you are able to read French take a look at the following:

Voila quelques temps j’ai sorti odtphp, un script PHP qui analyse des fichiers odt à la recherche de “tags” et qui les remplace par des données que vous fournissez.
C’est très pratique pour générer des factures ou d’autres documents basés sur un template odt et une source de données type MySQL.

Continue reading:

• LiveDocx : service web de templating de documents

Gjero Krsteski has just published an introduction that illustrates how to create word processing documents using Zend_Service_LiveDocx. If you are new to Zend_Service_LiveDocx and can read German, this is a great starting point:

Letztens stand ich vor der Herausforderung, eine PDF-Klasse zu schreiben, die PDF-Dateien erzeugt. Als Inhalt für die PDF Dateien waren sensible Kundendaten angedacht. Diese Anforderung war mir nicht fremd, jedoch konnte ich mich gut daran erinnern, dass sie mit viel Arbeit verbunden war. Die meisten Libraries bieten nur die Möglichkeit, die PDF-Dateien Zeile pro Zeile zu generieren Je nachdem woher man die Daten dafür beschaffen muss, kann sich dies zu einem mühseligem Unterfangen entwickeln. Hier kann ich aktuell zwei Lösungsansätze vorschlagen, die leicht anzuwenden sind und eine gute Sicherheit gewährleisten.

Continue reading:

• PDF Datei erzeugen

You may have heard about FPDF, TCPDF. These are used to generate PDF document in PHP. But very few of you may have heard about LiveDocx, can be found here http://www.livedocx.com/. The most cool news I’m going to tell you that Zend Framework 1.10.0 provides clean and simple interface to LiveDocx API. LiveDocx is soap based service. If you are interested more in LiveDocx, following the link I’ve already provided you.

Continue reading:

• Creating word processing document using Zend_Service_LiveDocx