PDF Generation Help needed

I am brandnew to PDF Generation or rendering but have a project to, create a PDF Template system that allows users to save Template to Databa开发者_如何学Pythonse, and later generate a PDF document using the template and values from my database.

Language to use C#

Questions

a) Is there a PDF tool out there that can help me with this and documentation I can study to learn of this? b) Are there free tools out there for this? c) How do I create a PDF Template? XML?

Thanks in Advance!

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You should have a look at xsl:fo. Apache has a tool which might be helpful.

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You can use PHP to create and modify PDFs. (Everything below is completely free.)

Here are two extensive tutorials on generating PDFs in PHP:

http://blog.eirikhoem.net/index.php/2008/04/28/populate-pdf-templates-with-php-fpdf-fpdi/

http://www.astahost.com/info.php/create-pdf-php_t4972.html

You can use the FPDF library located here to handle generating PDFs based off of templates.

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If You are using Java, you could try Docmosis or JODReports - they work from templates and can produce PDF output dynamically based on data and those templates. Depending on your template requirements, you might also be able to use Jasper Reports or Apache POI. All have free versions.

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If you are looking for an instant solution, take a look on http://pdfnow.com . You can upload your XSL/FO-Templates and simply generate PDF-Templates with a simple webservice call.

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I would give a shot to jsreport. You can install it on premise for free or use it online. It supports html -> pdf transformation using phantomjs or xml -> pdf transformation using apache fop.

The idea is that first you create report template using javascript templating engines like handlebars in jsreport studio and then you get back pdf by calling jsreport api.

If you are in c# there is jsreport c# sdk for it.

Note: I am the author of jsreport