Category: Tips & Tricks

This morning I’ve a new target, create PDF in runtime with Actionscript 3.
Very cool project to accomplished this mission is AlivePDF, an opensource AS3 library that you can download from Google Code.
AlivePDF allow you to generate PDF in runtime with Actionscript 3 and you can add pages, draw in each pages or add images, it’s very powerful library.

In this sample I use Actionscript 3 (with FDT) and Multidmedia Zinc 3, but you can use Flex or Flash and AIR to make this sample.
So first of all I create a simple class that allow you to create a PDF file with multiple pages and to add content in each pages.
This is the code:

package org.mart3.pdfGeneration {
    import flash.events.Event;    
    import flash.utils.ByteArray;    
    
    import org.alivepdf.images.ImageFormat;    
    import org.alivepdf.saving.Method;    
    
    import flash.display.Loader;    
    import flash.events.IEventDispatcher;    
    import flash.events.EventDispatcher;
    
    import org.alivepdf.pdf.PDF;
    import org.alivepdf.layout.Orientation;
    import org.alivepdf.layout.Size;
    import org.alivepdf.layout.Unit;
    import org.alivepdf.display.Display;
    
    /**
     * @author lm
     */
    public class CreatePDF extends EventDispatcher {
        
        private var pdf:PDF;
        public var pdfBA:ByteArray;
        
        public function CreatePDF(target : IEventDispatcher = null) {
            super(target);
            
            pdf = new PDF(Orientation.LANDSCAPE, Unit.MM, Size.A4);
            pdf.setDisplayMode(Display.FULL_PAGE);
        }
        
        public function set totalPages(num:int):void{
                
            for(var i:int = 0; i < num; i++){
            
                pdf.addPage();    
                
            }
    
        }
         public function setData(_l : Loader, _numPage:int) : void {
            
            pdf.gotoPage(_numPage);
            pdf.addImage(_l, 15, 15, 0, 0, ImageFormat.JPG, 100);
        }
        
        public function savePDF():void{
            pdfBA = new ByteArray();
            pdfBA = pdf.save(Method.LOCAL);
            
            var evt : Event = new Event("baReadyEvent");
            dispatchEvent(evt);
        }
    }
}

Obviously if you want, you can create a custom event that pass to the document class the ByteArray but this is a quick sample to show how you can create PDF in runtime!

One of the amazing things that you should do with AlivePDF, it’s that you can decide to save PDF locally or on web! Read documentation because it’s very interesting what you can do with this library!

Ok now, go to document class where we use MDM swc that you can find when install Zinc on your computer (you can find 2 differents SWC, one for Flash and the other one for Flex. Remeber also that Flash SWC works with Flash CS4 also, not only with Flash CS3!).
In this class we do those simple steps:

• create a PDF object using CreatePDF object
• set our PDF document
• pass an external image loaded with Loader object
• save PDF bytearray with Zinc FileSystem class

package org.mart3.pdfGeneration {

    import flash.display.MovieClip;    
    import flash.net.URLRequest;    
    import flash.display.Loader;    
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.events.Event;
    import flash.events.MouseEvent;

    import mdm.*;

    import org.mart3.pdfGeneration.*;

    /**
     * @author lm
     */
    public class Main extends Sprite {
    
        private var pdfObj:CreatePDF;
        private var l : Loader;
    
        public function Main() {
            
            mdm.Application.init(this);            
            
            pdfObj = new CreatePDF();
            pdfObj.totalPages = 2;
            pdfObj.addEventListener("baReadyEvent", saveLocalPDF);
            
            l =  new Loader();
            l.name = "myImg";
            
            l.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, showImage);
            l.load(new URLRequest(mdm.Application.path+"assets/bg.jpg"));
        }
        
        private function saveLocalPDF(e:Event) : void {
        
            mdm.FileSystem.BinaryFile.setDataBA(pdfObj.pdfBA);
            mdm.FileSystem.BinaryFile.writeDataBA(mdm.System.Paths.desktop+"generate.pdf");
    
        }

        private function showImage(event : Event) : void {
            
            l.scaleX = l.scaleY = .4;
            var mc : MovieClip = new MovieClip();
            mc.buttonMode = true;
            mc.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, savePDF);
            mc.addChild(l);
            this.addChild(mc);
        }
        
        private function savePDF(event : MouseEvent) : void {
            event.currentTarget.alpha = .5;
            pdfObj.setData(l, 1);
            pdfObj.savePDF();

            
        }
    }
}

You can also download source files from their hosting service and test it on your computer.
Feel free to give me any comments about AlivePDF, it’s very interesting to know what you think about this AS3 library.