By SevenVerbs on

I am working on a member site project. I have created a PDF document which has fillable fields which each member would work with inside the site.

Each member needs to have their own copy of the PDF document. I have worked with the Profile 2 module to create a profile page but I am wondering if there is any way to create a new PDF document the page would point to.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Bob

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

wadmiraal’s picture

wadmiraal commented

Not sure I understand. The PDF is being exported on the fly, or something? It contains data from the user profile? What do you mean:

if there is any way to create a new PDF document the page would point to.

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SevenVerbs’s picture

SevenVerbs commented

Good question. I am not explaining this very well.

I have created a PDF which has fields the user would fill in. Each new user needs their own copy of the PDF.

wadmiraal’s picture

wadmiraal commented

And this PDF has a dynamic URL, I guess? Like user/{user_id}/pdf? That will generate the PDF and push it for download (using some caching here would be good)?

I'm not sure I understand the "point to" part, I'm sorry.

So, IF I do understand:

1. A user has a profile (using Profile 2 in your case).
2. The data from this profile is used to generate PDF files
3. If a user updates her profile, the PDF is updated as well. This is why using a dynamic URL (user/{user_id}/pdf)would be nice. It could be generated on the fly and only if needed. If the PDF is downloaded a lot, it might be nice to have some cached version to improve performance.

Am I understanding correctly?

If so, would this not solve the problem? Having a URL which gets passed the user ID, which loads the profile and generates the PDF on the fly?

Or maybe I don't understand the application of this PDF.

I blog about Drupal right here

SevenVerbs’s picture

SevenVerbs commented

Actually the initial content of the pdf would be the same for each user. It just needs to be a unique copy which the user could open and check off progress in.

wadmiraal’s picture

wadmiraal commented

I think we're not talking about the same kind of PDF here. The user should open the PDF and check off items? And then the PDF should be saved in that state?

PDFs are (mostly) static documents, and there's no (easy) way for you to let a user interact with the contents and save it directly on your site. Unless the person has a download link, downloads the PDF on her computer, opens it, edits it (if you built the PDF in such a way), re-uploads it to her profile, which will replace the PDF in the original download link with this new one. And then, the cycle continues.

Is that it? Why the PDF? Can't you just use a simple form on the site off which the user can check off items?

I blog about Drupal right here

SevenVerbs’s picture

SevenVerbs commented

Thanks for clearing this up for me. We wanted to use a PDF because it would be easier for the person who is responsible for this to create them. I was thinking they would open the pdf and after they made changes it would simply be re-saved to the server. But as you pointed out, this is not the way it would work.

Your idea of using a simple form is most likely the best way to go. I tried to build something using the Profile2 module but found it difficult to create what we needed. Is there another tool we could use which would provide a unique form for each member of the site?

Thank you again for talking through this with me. It has been very helpful.

Bob