Mind The Gap

Archive for March, 2009

Adobe and Facebook announce ActionScript 3.0 client library for Facebook Platform API

Posted on March 31, 2009 by Marcel Boucher | Comments (0)

Very cool news, read more and get started on Adobe Developer Connection. Who will be the first to write a LiveCycle ES / Facebook mashup application????

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/facebook/?devcon=f1

MAX 2009 in Los Angeles and Online

Posted on March 25, 2009 by Marcel Boucher | Comments (2)

Well, it looks like the economic situation is not going to deter the organizers of Adobe MAX. Today, we announced that there will be a MAX event in 2009. The dates are from October 4th to the 7th. Unfortunately, there will not be a MAX Europe. The plan is to hold online sessions to reach the global audience.

I have to admit, I have looked at the recordings of MAX 2008 on Adobe TV and I am very impressed. According to Ted Patrick, the recorded sessions have had 250,000 unique users access the content. Not bad

The Enterprise side of the house is going to have some VERY exciting things to show this year – specially for those of you that build enterprise-class RIAs… Wink wink.

If you would like to participate in the “MAX call for Sessions and Labs”, go here http://groups.adobe.com/pages/5fbd55f575.

See you at MAX 2009 – be it personally or virtually.

Solution Accelerator Program re-launched on DevNet

Posted on March 10, 2009 by Marcel Boucher | Comments (0)

The Solution Accelerator program has undergone a slight facelift and has been re-launched on the Adobe Developer Network.

Check it out

Submitting data from an PDF Form to MS SharePoint

Posted on March 9, 2009 by Marcel Boucher | Comments (9)

I have heard a few of our customers mention that they have SharePoint and LiveCycle ES but there seems to be a knowledge gap in how the two can be used together. Recently, we posted a whitepaper on Devnet. This whitepaper provides an excellent overview of the integration possibilities and added-value touch points. But the bottom line is that samples are what make the IT world turn. So, I decided that I would create a couple of quick samples that would demonstrate some of the low hanging fruit available. The problem is, where to start??? As if it was a sign, I stumbled on an Adobe forums post where someone was trying to submit data from a PDF form to SharePoint.

The key to handle a custom submission in SharePoint is to create a custom handler. Sounds worse than it actually is. It’s actually very simple to get this working. Here is a link to a good MSDN article on how to create custom handlers (ashx) for Sharepoint 3.0:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457204.aspx. From this article, I was able to create a custom handler that accepts an XML post from a PDF form. The handler then parses the submitted XML and extract some key values. Since this is a sample, I took the liberty to hard-code some of the logic to keep things simple . Using the SPList API, I create a new list entry (A custom list I created in SharePoint called ‘Purchase Order’). Since the list I created had custom columns (Total, date, ordered by), I pump the data extracted from the XML submission into the desired columns. Finally, I attach the submitted XML document to the list entry.

As for the PDF Form, all you have to do is edit the form in Adobe Designer, configure the submit button on your form to submit XML or XDP data, and point the submission to your custom handler (ex: http://mysharepointserver/_layouts/SP_PDFSubmitHandler.ashx).

Get the Custom SharePoint Handler Sample Here

The screenshot below shows what the result of the submission looks like.

This is a snapshot of the the Custom List: