By: Jose Pimentel – Amyuni Technologies
Cloud services such as Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Google Docs, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft Azure and others are excellent repositories for document storage. Each of these services allows users to off-load document storage to the cloud. Although any type of document can be stored in the Cloud, it is often desirable to store all documents in the standard PDF format with all the benefits that come with using PDF. Converting documents to PDF and then uploading them to the Cloud is typically a two-step process that requires manual operations such as printing the document to a virtual printer and logging-in to web site to upload.
In this paper we will describe a solution for easily converting documents into PDF for storage in the Cloud in a single automated process.
Requirements (Server Side)
A Cloud service that exposes an API to allow developers to automate the tasks of storing and retrieving documents.
Taking a closer look at cloud services, we found a number of issues when trying to decide on a service to use.
– There are really no “free” evaluation services. Google Cloud Storage, Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure services all require credit card information for evaluation.
– Google Docs does offer a free evaluation but there is a one month time period.
– Although both Dropbox and Box services offer free developer evaluation accounts, both of these applications require clients or users to first login to their website before file transfers occur. This breaks up the flow of the application.
In looking at the cloud storage services available we ended up focusing on Google Docs which is part of Google Apps for Business and Microsoft Azure (Blob Storage Service).
Requirements (Client Side)
When looking at the cloud storage printing solution we wanted to achieve:
– We needed a tool to convert all user documents into PDF before sending them to the Cloud
– We needed direct transfer or no client PC storage for safety and efficiency
– We needed a solution that is easy to implement and use
– We needed a high performance engine in order not to hinder the user’s workflow
The Amyuni PDF Converter responded to all our requirements. PDF Converter is a virtual printer driver that converts output sent to it from a printing application into PDF format. The printer driver which is certified by Microsoft for all 32 and 64bit editions of windows, offers the developer complete control over the printing process. The Amyuni PDF Converter product which is needed to run the sample application described in this paper can be downloaded from http://www.amyuni.com/en/enduser/pdfconverterend.
Implementation
The Amyuni PDF Converter printer driver API enables developers to intercept the datastream coming from the printer driver and handle it in their own custom application. The developer has the option to store the datastream locally, to a network drive or even to the cloud.
The intercepting of the datastream is accomplished by configuring the PDF Converter to call a custom DLL during the print job. This custom DLL will perform the “work” of uploading to the cloud.
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