Did you know that you can use our DynaPDF graphics class integration in our MBS Xojo DynaPDF Plugin with the Xojo’s report engine and output your reports as PDF files?
And while you are using DynaPDF, enjoy all the other features like importing existing pages and using them as background. This allows your application to take a PDF created by your user to put behind the reports to customize them.
Of course you can also use DynaPDF drawing functions to draw the report yourself. Or maybe better use DynaPDFTableMBS class to create tables for the layout. We have an excellent invoices examples for this.
To add a background, you can just drop in this code to load a PDF page from a template PDF instead of the normal append call to create a new blank PDF page:
[code]// optionally put a background in the PDF
Dim fi As FolderItem = SpecialFolder.Desktop.Child(“template.pdf”)
If fi <> Nil And fi.Exists Then
// ask plugin to ignore clearRect call from Xojo, so we see what’s behind report
pdf.ClearRectMode = pdf.kClearRectModeIgnoreBig
Call pdf.OpenImportFile(fi) // needs Lite
'Call pdf.ImportPDFFile // needs Lite
Call pdf.ImportPDFPage(1) // needs Pro
If pdf.GetPageCount = 1 Then
// okay
Call pdf.EditPage(1)
Else
// import failed?
Call pdf.Append
End If
Else
Call pdf.Append
End If[/code]
As you see we have to set our ClearRectMode property to ignore any ClearRect call which would clear the page. Otherwise the background is replaced with a white rectangle. The property is new in version 20.2 of our MBS Xojo DynaPDF Plugin.
See also Graphics class for DynaPDF and Create a PDF with PageGraphics and DynaPDF on our blog.
Please do not hesitate to contact us with your questions.