I have a client who has been happily using PDFCreator for the past 3 years with her Visual FoxPro 9.0 program. It works like a whistle. Even after PDFCreator updates. No problems. Until now. We have had to revert back to PDFCreator 1.7 so they continue to convert foxpro reports to PDF.
I am adding the PDF conversion code that I have had written. You’ll see that I am now checking to see which version of PDFCreator a person has before moving forward. I have looked over the PDFCreator Manual and looked at the COM Object. But I keep getting error after error message.
FUNCTION PrintPDF
* output report to PDF file
* lcReport = name of the FoxPro report file
* lcName = name of the PDF file
***********************************************************
PARAMETERS lcReport, lcName
LOCAL lcNewFile, lcReportFile, lnCount, lcSeconds
lcSeconds = 0
lcNewFile = 'c:\temp\ewFile.pdf’
lcReportFile = STRTRAN(lcName, ‘"’, “_”)
IF FILE(lcReportFile)
DELETE FILE (lcReportFile)
ENDIF
IF FILE(lcNewFile)
DELETE FILE (lcNewFile)
ENDIF
WAIT “Preparing PDF Attachments…” WINDOW AT 35, 35 NOWAIT TIMEOUT 5
LOCAL opdfcreator, isrunning, xpdfversion, oPdfCreatorQueue
isrunning = .F.
xPdfVersion = 0
! *Check to see which version of PDFCreator user is using.
LOCAL xfileName, theString
xfileName = "C:\Program Files\PDFCreator\pdfcreator.exe"
IF FILE(xfilename)
DIMENSION verArray(1)
theVal = AGETFILEVERSION(verArray,xfilename)
IF theVal != 0
theString = ALLTRIM(verArray(4))
xPdfVersion = VAL(LEFT(theString,1))
ENDIF
ENDIF
IF xpdfVersion >= 2
*PDFCreator is new version, 2.0 or higher
opdfcreator = CREATEOBJECT(“PDFCreatorBeta.PDFCreator”)
isrunning = opdfcreator.IsInstanceRunning()
IF isrunning = .F.
IF FILE(“C:\Program Files\PDFCreator\pdfcreator.exe”)
RUN /n2 “C:\Program Files\PDFCreator\pdfcreator.exe”
ENDIF
ENDIF
_screen.MousePointer = 11
oPdfCreatorQueue = CREATEOBJECT(“PDFCreatorBeta.JobQueue”)
oPdfCreatorQueue.Initialize()
REPORT FORM (lcReport) TO PRINTER
SET PRINTER TO default
* allow up to [LCSECONDS] sec for PDF file to be created
FOR lnCount = 1 TO lcseconds
=INKEY(1, ‘H’)
IF FILE(lcNewFile)
EXIT
ENDIF
ENDFOR
=INKEY(1, ‘H’)
IF FILE(lcNewFile)
RENAME (lcNewFile) TO (lcReportFile)
ELSE
MESSAGEBOX(“PDF File was not created. Please inform System Programmer.”)
ENDIF
oPdfCreatorQueue.releasecom()
ELSE
*PDFCreator is a version below 2.0.
opdfcreator = CREATEOBJECT(“PDFCreator.clsPDFCreator”)
isrunning = opdfcreator.cProgramIsRunning()
IF isrunning = .F.
IF FILE(“C:\Program Files\PDFCreator\pdfcreator.exe”)
RUN /n2 “C:\Program Files\PDFCreator\pdfcreator.exe”
ENDIF
endif
_screen.MousePointer = 11
lcSeconds = 60
SET PRINTER TO NAME PDFCreator
REPORT FORM (lcReport) TO PRINTER
SET PRINTER TO default
* allow up to [LCSECONDS] sec for PDF file to be created
FOR lnCount = 1 TO lcseconds
=INKEY(1, ‘H’)
IF FILE(lcNewFile)
EXIT
ENDIF
ENDFOR
=INKEY(1, ‘H’)
IF FILE(lcNewFile)
RENAME (lcNewFile) TO (lcReportFile)
ELSE
MESSAGEBOX(“PDF File was not created. Please inform System Programmer.”)
ENDIF
ENDIF
RELEASE opdfcreator, isrunning, xPdfVersion, opdfcreatorqueue
RELEASE xfileName, theString
_screen.MousePointer = 1
RETURN
I have been trying to get the code to work with FoxPro using PDFCreatorQueue.NextJob to create a job object but it isn’t working.
oJob = oPDFCreatorQueue.NextJob()
That keeps telling me Ole IDispatcher exception code 0 from PDFCreator: Invalid Index. Please check index parameter.
Followed by:
ojob not an object.
Is there anybody out there who has successfully gotten Visual FoxPro to talk to and use PDFCreator 2.0 COM object?
Thank you
Brandy Williams
Hello,
although I’m not familiar with FoxPro, I think I have encountered 2 big problems that lead to exceptions in your program:
1.
IF isrunning = .F.
IF FILE(“C:\Program Files\PDFCreator\pdfcreator.exe”)
RUN /n2 “C:\Program Files\PDFCreator\pdfcreator.exe”
ENDIF
endif
IF FILE(“C:\Program Files\PDFCreator\pdfcreator.exe”)
RUN /n2 “C:\Program Files\PDFCreator\pdfcreator.exe”
ENDIF
endif
*some lines below
oPdfCreatorQueue = CREATEOBJECT(“PDFCreatorBeta.JobQueue”)
In these lines, as far as I understood, you check if a PDFCreator instance is already running and if it is not, you start it. But here is the problem: You cannot start a PDFCreator instance and after that trying to get a COM Object of that. So here is what has actually to be done:
Check if PDFCreator instance is running, if it is wait or close it, that’s up to you, but what is important is that the instance must be closed before calling CREATEOBJECT(PDFCreatorBeta.JobQueue).
2.
After these lines
Check if PDFCreator instance is running, if it is wait or close it, that’s up to you, but what is important is that the instance must be closed before calling CREATEOBJECT(PDFCreatorBeta.JobQueue).
2.
After these lines
REPORT FORM (lcReport) TO PRINTER
SET PRINTER TO default
SET PRINTER TO default
Your further workflow with the COM interface is not correct, therefore I would recommend you to take a look at the workflow from the user manual (can be found in PDFCreatorManual/COM Interface/User Manual/Basics/Convert a single file) and additionally take a look at the provided COM Scripts (can be found in PDFCreator directory go to COM Scripts/JS Scripts/Basics/TestPage2PDF.js). Both resources point out the workflow principles.
I hope that this will help you,
I hope that this will help you,
Regards,
Sazan
Thank Sazan. I have removed the COM object calls and ended up making it alot simplier than I had originally made it.
After checking to see if there is an instance of PDFCreator, and if it is not running, run it, I then used my previous code this way (without COM object):
lcSeconds = 60
SET PRINTER TO NAME PDFCreator
REPORT FORM (lcReport) TO PRINTER
SET PRINTER TO default
* allow up to [LCSECONDS] sec for PDF file to be created
FOR lnCount = 1 TO lcseconds
=INKEY(1, ‘H’)
IF FILE(lcNewFile)
EXIT
ENDIF
ENDFOR
=INKEY(1, ‘H’)
IF FILE(lcNewFile)
RENAME (lcNewFile) TO (lcReportFile)
ELSE
MESSAGEBOX(“PDF File was not created. Please inform System Programmer.”)
ENDIF
It is working like a charm! Thank you!
You’re welcome! 