LiveDocx in PHP

I am delighted to announce that I will be proposing a lightening talk about document generation with the Zend Framework at PHPNW11 Unconference in Manchester, UK between October 08, 2011 and October 09, 2011:

Template-Based DOCX, DOC & PDF Generation with the Zend Framework

Using current PDF generation libraries in PHP, it is time consuming to get the formatting of a document exactly right. You need to choose between either the HTML-to-PDF approach, or the programmatic approach, in which you define the x and y co-ordinates of each and every element on a page.

In this lightening talk, I would like to present an alternative approach to generating not only PDF files with PHP but, amongst others, also DOCX and DOC, and even TIFF and BMP. It utilizes templates, created in a word processing package, for example Microsoft Word, and the Zend Framework.

The approach supports PHP on Linux, Windows and Mac OS.

The unconference will take place at the Ramada Manchester Piccadilly in Manchester, UK.

A voting process will commence after talk submissions have closed on September 11, 2011, and will remain open until September 28, 2011. Only delegates of PHPNW11 are eligible to vote.

If you are interested in learning about an alternative approach to creating professional, print-ready documents with PHP, vote for me!

See you all in Manchester next month.

October 01, 2011: My proposal got accepted and I will be offering the session at PHPNW11 Unconference. Joind.in Quicklink: http://joind.in/3812.

October 02, 2011: The Ramada Manchester Piccadilly got rebranded Mercure Manchester Piccadilly.

Björn Meyer over at livedocx.com has just published a video (below) that illustrates how to set up a LiveDocx account, create a template with one merge field in Microsoft Word and finally how to populate the template, using a Visual Studio .NET based application.

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.

Despite this blog being about using LiveDocx in PHP, I am often asked whether it is possible to use LiveDocx in Python.

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.