PDF Tools

Hi Druva Kota

Thus plug-in no longer deploys in one of our internal CS Cloud environments. Support have diagnosed this as an issue with a deprecated function to change the data type of a CDT. In this environment there is already a PdFField CDT with a different namespace:

PdfField (http://types.appiancorp.com/ps). Deleting this CDT before deploying the plug-in does not seem to make any difference - the CDT is re- created with the same namespace during the failed deployment.

Deployment error:

2020-10-07 02:25:00,850 [localhost-startStop-1] ERROR com.appiancorp.plugins.LoggingPluginEventListener - Failed to enable Plug-in 'PDF Tools' (pdftools) version 2.2.9: 'There was a problem loading the module descriptor: Fill PDF.<br/>com.appiancorp.suiteapi.common.exceptions.AppianRuntimeException: com.appiancorp.process.admin.IncompatibleSmartServiceRegistrationException: The Smart Service Module was invalid: Illegal attempt to change the data type for smart service pdftools.FillPDFPauseOnError, input or output named PdfFields (APNX-1-4104-005)' 

Support recommendation:

In terms of next steps, I recommend following the steps outlined in the following KB to update the CDT version that the plug-in is referencing in the code: community.appian.com/.../kb-1097-illegal-attempt-to-change-the-data-type-for-smart-service-x-x-x-input-or-output-named-name-error-thrown-during-plugin-deployment

This has NO documentation whatsoever on how to use this properly to generate a PDF. Alternative - Create a PDF template, Use "PDF doc from Template" smart service.

Has anyone run into issues with the "Get PDF Text" function? It doesn't seem to retain the order of text present in the document. It will mix in the header content of the page with the text body of the document. 

Druva Kota just in case you see this..?

I'm having an issue when using FillPDF to populate fields in a LiveCycle document.  First I need to offer kudos that it works at all - the LiveCycle file format is pestersome and in my experience has been hard to work with.

My issue is pretty straightforward: when I fill in a field in-process, and view the resulting document either in the Appian preview field, or previewed directly within Chrome, the filled-in value appears seemingly correctly.  But if I download the generated document and open in Adobe Reader, the field is apparently still empty.  If I open the file in a text editor, I'm able to find the value that had been inserted... but when I enter the value directly in Adobe Reader then save, the desired value shows up in additional places within the binary (again, viewed within a text editor).  I don't know what the exact issue is here, however it's preventing me from using Fill PDF to fulfill a use case of ours, which the older PDF from Template smart service fails at (in a worse way).  If anyone's able to offer some insight into this, I'd appreciate it.

• Additional cleanup on plug-in uninstall

Hi,

Getting below Error while trying to deploy the plug-in 

HTTP Code: 500 APNX-1-4198-019 An Error Has Occurred Expression evaluation error [evaluation ID = R067GEJB] : An error occurred while executing a save: java.util.UnknownFormatConversionException: Conversion = 'D'

Any reason with Environment Specific ? 

Thanks in Advance

*without any errors

Found a work around. use the "Un-protect and Copy PDF" Smart Service.

This will ensure that using the function, getpdfmetadata will not throw an uncaught exception.
The newly created un-protected copy of PDF will be "clean" and using getpdfmetadata will work without an errors.

Hi,

Looks like there's an issue when using getpdfmetadata.

Expression evaluation error at function 'getpdfmetadata' [line 50]: XML handling failure trying to convert value com.appiancorp.ps.pdftools.types.PdfMetadata@5d283490 to Appian type PdfMetadata (id=3084)

It appears that there are "BAD" pdf files that cannot be read and will throw an error.

Will there be a proper exception handling for this function?