Prerequisites

JODConverter 3.0 requires:

Java 1.5 or later
OpenOffice.org 3.x or LibreOffice

We recommend that you use the latest OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice version.

Command Line

The command line tool provides a good way to check that everything is working, i.e. that you have the right OOo/LibO version installed etc. To convert a document do e.g.:

java -jar lib/jodconverter-core-3.0-beta-4.jar test.odt test.pdf

Note: if all you want is a command line tool, you may also have a look at this Python script. It's smaller, simpler, and easier to customise.

Important: This tool is not intended to support multiple concurrent executions, e.g. being invoked at each web request from a PHP or Ruby app.

Java Code

Here's a basic example of Java code that converts a single document:

    OfficeManager officeManager = new DefaultOfficeManagerConfiguration().buildOfficeManager();
    officeManager.start();

    OfficeDocumentConverter converter = new OfficeDocumentConverter(officeManager);
    converter.convert(new File("test.odt"), new File("test.pdf");
        
    officeManager.stop();

Note that these few lines will actually do quite a few things: start an OOo process that listens on the port 2002, connect to it, tell OOo/LibO to load test.odt, then to save it as pdf, and finally terminate the OOo/LibO process.

Here's another example showing a few configuration options:

    OfficeManager officeManager = new DefaultOfficeManagerConfiguration()
      .setOfficeHome("/usr/lib/openoffice")
      .setConnectionProtocol(OfficeConnectionProtocol.PIPE)
      .setPipeNames("office1", "office2")
      .setTaskExecutionTimeout(30000L)
      .buildOfficeManager();

This officeManager will use the OOo/LibO installation in the specified directory, connecting via named pipes rather than TCP sockets, use a pool of two OOo/LibO processes identified by the given pipe names, and abort any conversion that takes longer than 30 seconds. (Note that using named pipes requires adding a native library to java.library.path; see Configuration for more info.)

Web Applications

A basic example of a web application is available in the Subversion repository, under jodconverter-sample-webapp.

The most important concept is that you should start a single OfficeManager instance when your webapp starts (using a servlet listener, Spring context configuration, or equivalent facility provided by your framework of choice), stop it when your webapp stops, and share it across all requests. The OfficeManager will take care of multi-threading.

Comment by liam.obo...@gmail.com, Feb 20, 2010

The sample web app does not currently provide a web service in the same way that the old jodconverter 2 series did, but it's still possible to use it as such if you want to. The following sample code simulates a POST to the web app. It requires the Pear HTTP_Request2 module.

<?php
require_once 'HTTP/Request2.php';

class DocumentConverterClient {

    var $url = 'http://localhost:8080/converter/converted/document.pdf';

    function convert($inputFile, $outputType) {
        $request = new HTTP_Request2($this->url);
        $request->setMethod(HTTP_Request2::METHOD_POST)
            ->setHeader('Content-Type', 'multipart/form-data')
            ->addPostParameter('outputFormat', $outputType)
            ->setBody($inputData);
        $request->addUpload('inputDocument', $inputFile);

        return $request->send()->getBody();
    }
}

$documentConverter = new DocumentConverterClient();

$inputFile = '/home/elyobo/src/ib/bigppt.ppt';
$outputFile = 'document.pdf';
$outputType = 'pdf';

$outputData = $documentConverter->convert($inputFile, $outputType);
file_put_contents($outputFile, $outputData);

For more assistance on building the web application, see my comment on the BuildingFromSource page.

Comment by project member mirko.na...@gmail.com, Jul 5, 2010

Please use the group for questions: http://groups.google.com/group/jodconverter/