Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 656 pages
- Published by: Manning Publications December 8, 2006
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 1932394796
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-1932394795
-
Book Dimensions:
9.2 x 7.4 x 1.6 inches
- Weighs: 2.5 pounds
Product Description
Imagine a publisher who wants to "stamp" his ebooks on the fly with the name of the buyer (to discourage sharing). Such a publisher would (and we know one who does) use iText for the task. Developers looking to enhance web- and other applications with dynamic PDF document generation and/or manipulation will find this book unique in content
and readability. Based on ongoing examples that encourage learning "in action," they will finally understand PDF and learn how to build applications that produce professional, high-quality PDF documents. While the basic functionality of iText is easy to acquire, this book lowers the learning curve for more advanced functionality. It explains how to use iText to create/manipulate PDF documents on-the-fly in one or more of the following situations:
Due to time or size, the PDF documents can't be produced manually The content of the document must be calculated or based on user input. The content requirements to be customized or personalized. The PDF content requirements to be served in a web environment. Documents are to be created in "batch process" mode.
All the examples are written in Java, but they can be easily adapted to .NET by developers using one of the .NET ports: iTextSharp (C#) or iText.NET (#J). While iText is a free Java library and the examples are written from the point of view of the Java developer, nine out of ten examples can be run by .NET developers with only minimal changes.
About The Author
Bruno Lowagie has been programming since he was twelve years old. He has a degree in civil architectural engineering and is the initial developer and one of the current maintainers of iText. He works at Ghent University, Belgium.
Reader Reviews
In January 2006 I was assigned to build a system that would create lots of PDF reports, typically with hundreds of pages of tables, and with tables nested in other tables. I started with an an open-source tool called BIRT that is well-designed and powerful, but it didn't quite give me sufficient low-level control over some aspects of PDF creation. When I realized that BIRT wasn't going to work for me, I was behind schedule and in trouble. Then I discovered iText. (BIRT actually is built using iText jar files.) I found that iText gave me exactly what I needed: an easy-to-use yet powerful Java API for creating PDF files. The remainder of the project, using iText, went smoothly, and my boss was very happy with the results. But I sure wish that I'd had Bruno Lowagie's "iText in Action" book at the time! That would have shaved a few weeks off of the project and would have saved me from learning some things painfully, by trial and error. As the original developer of iText, Bruno Lowagie is uniquely qualified to write this book. He obviously put a huge amount of effort into it, reflecting his longstanding commitment to iText. He made every effort to explain things as clearly as possible, and to document the pitfalls as well as the attractive features. It is evidently a labor of love for him. The book is written to the high editorial standards of other Manning books, with clear organization, good typography and layout, and so on. I highly recommended iText itself, and also this book, to anyone who is using Java to work with PDF files.
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