PDFlib 8 Windows COM/.NET Tutorial

11.5 Filling Blocks with PPS
In order to fill Blocks with PPS you must first place the page containing the Blocks on
the output page with the fit_pdi_page( ) function. After placing the page its Blocks can be
filled with the fill_*block( ) functions.
Simple example: add variable text to a template. Adding dynamic text to a PDF template
is a very common task. The following code fragment opens a page in an input PDF
document (the template or Block container), places it on the output page, and fills some
variable text into a text Block called firstname:
doc = p.open_pdi_document(filename, "");
if (doc == -1)
throw new Exception("Error: " + p.get_errmsg());
page = p.open_pdi_page(doc, pageno, "");
if (page == -1)
throw new Exception("Error: " + p.get_errmsg());
p.begin_page_ext(width, height, "");
/* Place the imported page */
p.fit_pdi_page(page, 0.0, 0.0, "");
/* Fill a single Block on the placed page */
p.fill_textblock(page, "firstname", "Serge", "encoding=winansi");
p.close_pdi_page(page);
p.end_page_ext("");
p.close_pdi_document(doc);
Cookbook A full code sample can be found in the Cookbook topic blocks/starter_block.
Overriding Block properties. In certain situations the programmer wants to use only
some of the properties provided in a Block definition, but override other properties
with custom values. This can be useful in various situations:
> Business logic may decide to enforce certain overrides.
> The scaling factor for an image or PDF page will be calculated by the application instead
of taken from the Block definition.
> Change the Block coordinates programmatically, for example when generating an
invoice with a variable number of data items.
> Individual spot color names could be supplied in order to match customer requirements
in a print shop application.
Property overrides can be achieved by supplying property names and the corresponding
values in the option list of the fill_*block( ) functions, e.g.
p.fill_textblock(page, "firstname", "Serge", "fontsize=12");
This will override the Block’s internal fontsize property with the supplied value 12. Almost
all property names can be used as options.
Property overrides apply only to the respective function calls; they will not be stored
in the Block definition.
296 Chapter 11: PPS and the PDFlib Block Plugin (Edition for COM, .NET, and REALbasic)