Creating output using the API

Concept

At some point, your portal will almost definitely require output (most often a high quality PDF file) to be extracted and inserted into your own workflows.

This can be done as a separate step in a web2print portal (showing the user the PDF before actually ordering). But as CHILI is a true WYSIWYG editor, an end user usually doesn't see a PDF file. Rather, the portal tends to embed a preview image as a last step, and the PDF file is only generated in the background for production purposes (but of course that's up to you to decide).

WebService Functions

Keep in mind that most of these functions will execute within the context of a background task: ?Asynchronous Tasks

The DocumentCreateXXX and DocumentCreateTempXXX webservice functions group the various output options. The difference between the two sets is that DocumentCreateXXX will use the last saved version of the document, whereas DocumentCreateTempXXX will also allow you to supply a temporary state of the document (the latter is used by CHILI Editor itself from the "Output" tab as well, as the user usually has unsaved versions of the document open).

Where relevant, PDF Export Settings are supplied as the underlying XML configuration of the settings (wihich may be modified by the portal before sending to the relevant functions). These can be retrieved using (for example) ?Webservice Functions - ResourceItemGetXML, for the relevant PdfExportSettings resourceItem.

PDF output can be created using ?Webservice Functions - DocumentCreatePDF

A CHILI Package using ?Webservice Functions - DocumentCreatePackage

Images can be extracted by combining PDF Export Settings and an Img. Conversion Profile: ?Webservice Functions - DocumentCreateImages

(and their "Temp" versions, in all cases)

And of course you can use the document's underlying XML (and/or combinations of the above functions) to export to other formats.