HTML to PDF conversion for AS/400? (Using PML/Websmart on top of RPG)

Question

Having trouble converting HTML into PDF using AS/400 server-side (IBM iSeries). The only tool [in existence?] is Apache FOP, however it requires XML/XSL-FO input. I'm not sure I'm ready to learn how to generate and style XML using PML/Websmart on top of RPG.

Any ideas? The report doesn't have to look fantastic. Are there any browser-based XML generators specifically for PDF (eg javascript) which can grab the current web-page and spit out XML into a DOM node or something? I would have to hide the information in a form, then from there I could grab the XML server-side and place it into the Apache product. Something that could take HTML directly into PDF would be even better...

I've found plenty of server-side products for modern systems, but the AS/400 (believed it or not) just doesn't seem to have the same variety of tools. :)

thank you, Allan

Answer 1

Flying Saucer is a Java toolkit for directly converting XHTML to several formats including PDF and may suit your requirements.

I have experimented with using jsoup to create well-formed XHTML documents and using flying saucer to generate PDF documents.

A quick search also turned up a commercial tool called PD4ML .