Difference between pdfobject and pdfsource??

[Former Member]

Whats the difference between the two and where do we specify them? I saw a properly called pdfsource for interactive form. In some tutorials, its filled as pdfsource and in some pdfobject. Is that where we specify them? Also can I name that pdfsource property of interactive form to something like pdfsource1, pdfsource2?

[krishanu_biswas · Accepted solution]

Hello Narayana,

Maybe a good source of information for you will be SAP's help portal, to start with. Nevertheless, let me try to answer your questions:

pdfSource: This is a property of the interactive form. You will normally map this property to a context variable of type "binary". In essence, when the pdf is created, it is stored in this context attribute for easy retrieval by your application. This mapped context attribute name could be anything (pdfsource1, pdfsource2, pdfobject - any name you want) as long as the type of this attribute is "binary". You may bind this property to a binary context attribute or may keep it unbound. What does that mean for your application ? That means, if you bind this property to a binary context attribute, your application would be able to retrieve the latest binary PDF from the context in a server round trip. If you do not bind it, you will still have your XML data submitted in the context but not the PDF as a binary. Now, you have to decide, do you need a binary PDF at any point in time on the server in your application or having the application data exchanged between the browser and the server is sufficient for you ? You may ignore this binding accordingly. It will make your application work faster. But, evaluate your requirement first in a complete details. Some of the functionalities for example, attachments, digital signature, comments etc. requires the PDF binary be available on the server.

PDFObject: PDFObject is the name of the API (replaced by PDFDocument API in NW04s. Take a look at the following link for the PDFDocument API Javadoc: https://help.sap.com/javadocs/NW04S/SPS09/wd/index.html) to be used to handle the creation and manipulation of PDF document/interactive forms programatically by the application.

Best Regards,

Krish