Generate Search Results from Filtered Documents

Sometimes, we have a lot of different formatted documents. We create index then perform search and API shows hits from all the indexed documents. Ever thought to get search results from desired documents only?

Let’s dig it further. Suppose, you have multiple TXT, XLSX and DOCX documents. What if you want to search a word or text only in TXT and DOCX files with specific word occurrence in file names? We’ve now improved ISearchDocumentFilter interface for such a purpose in GroupDocs.Search. This interface represents search document filter and it uses SearchDocumentFilter class for creation of a filter instances.

Let’s now understand this with a use-case.
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What we did in this example? We initiated a request to search occurrence of a word hobbit in all the TXT and DOCX files with word task in their file names. In this snippet, you can see a method CreateConjuction. It creates logical conjunction (logical and) of the specified filters.

Settings for Log Functionality

This improvement allows to set up log file name and maximum log file size. Below are the public API changes.
Following class has been added to GroupDocs.Search namespace and com.groupdocs.search package:

  • LogSettings
Following properties are added to GroupDocs.Search.LogSettings and com.groupdocs.search.LogSettings class: C#
  • string FileName
  • double MaxSize
Java
  • String getFileName()
  • void setFileName(String value)
  • double getMaxSize()
  • void setMaxSize(double value)
Below properties are added to GroupDocs.Search.Index and com.groupdocs.search.Index classes respectively:
  • LogSettings LogSettings
  • LogSettings getLogSettings()


Let’s go through the implementation:
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Add English Synonyms

This improvement adds English synonyms to default synonym dictionary.
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Above are the major improvements introduced in version 19.5. Please go through all the other changes in release notes:

Avail these exciting improvements now in your project. This release is available for download. Please share your feedback or concerns here.

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Save Assembled Word Processing, Presentation, Spreadsheet and Email Documents as HTML File with Resources

The HTML format is widely used for creating the webpages or, in other words, the HTML files. These days, every operating system, whether it be of desktop or mobile, contains the built-in web browser that supports viewing the HTML files. Other than that, many free web browsers are also available in the market. This means that any information or the content that is available in the form of HTML pages can easily be viewed just having installed a web browser.

Let’s suppose a scenario where my friend shared with me a Word document created in MS Word but the problem is I don’t have MS Office installed on my system. So how would I view the content of the file? A suitable solution is if I could get the HTML form of that Word document then it can be viewed in my web browser and thus, I won’t have to install MS Office.

Now, you could imagine the usefulness of the HTML format apart from its usage in web development. So, let’s now find out how did we make use of HTML format in making GroupDocs.Assembly more powerful and useful for you.

Since version 19.5 of GroupDocs.Assembly, the assembled Word Processing documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations and Email files could be saved as HTML with resources. This means that the generated reports can now be saved as HTML files along with the resources such as images and, as I have mentioned before, you would only need to have a web browser to view the content of the generated reports.

Let’s take the example of generating the report from the Word template and see how we can save the report as an HTML file. For saving the generated report as HTML with resources, we have added a new property ResourceSaveFolder to the LoadSaveOptions class to specify the folder that will be used to store the resource files. If no folder is specified, by default, external resource files will be stored to a folder having the same name as that of the HTML file (without extension) plus the “_files” suffix. The following code snippets demonstrate this feature:

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Along with this feature, we have also added the facility of loading HTML template documents referencing external resource files to be assembled and saved to non-HTML formats. For this, the containing folder of the template file is used as a base URI to resolve external resource files’ relative URIs to absolute ones by default, as shown in the following code snippet:

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Well, this would definitely be a really attracting release for you guys. So let’s not wait and download the latest version to check how these features can make your report generation applications more powerful.

For any questions or suggestions, have a conversation with us on our forum.

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Access Metadata Properties from PPS, PPSX, PPSM, and vCard Formats

Another month, another release! We have recently released version 19.5 of GroupDocs.Metadata for .NET and Java and today I am going to give you an overview of what’s new that we have brought for you in the latest release.

In v19.5, we mainly focused on providing the support of some major as well as popular formats. So, this resulted in the addition of the following file formats:

  • PPS – The PowerPoint Slideshow file format that is created using Microsoft PowerPoint and it is used for the slide show purpose. It is similar to the PPT format, however, unlike PPT, the presentation mode starts automatically when the PPS file is opened.
  • PPSX – An updated version of the PPS format that was supported by Microsoft PowerPoint 97-2003 versions.
  • PPSM – It represents a Macro-enabled Slide Show file format that is created with Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 or higher for running the slideshow.
  • vCard – Or VCF (Virtual Card Format) is a digital format that is used to store the contact information. It is a popular and widely used file format for information exchange.

The PPS, PPSX and PPSM file formats will be accessed in the same way that you have been using for other presentation formats using PptFormat class. For the vCard format, we have introduced VCardFormat class and this is how you can access the properties of a .vcf file.

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Not only this but we have also added the feature of checking the amount of credits that are spent using the metered license.

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Well, that’s it from my side and now, it’s your turn to evaluate these features by downloading and using the latest version of the APIs. In case of any confusion or query, please feel free to post on our forum.

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Cache Page Previews in GroupDocs.Annotation for Java

EnableCaching feature stores image representation of a document in a directory at the local drive. In case of repetitive processing/opening of a document, it uses cached data. This thing helps to avoid the processing of the same document again and again. You might be waiting for this feature. The wait is over now. API permits you to enable cache mode and cache page previews. Let’s take a overview of its code.

We also added possibility to display distance annotation caption for following file formats:

  • Slides
  • Cells
  • Diagrams

Following older formats for Slides, Cells and Words are now supported:

  • .ppt
  • .xls
  • .doc

Along with new features, this release also covers some improvements and bug fixes. As an improvement we refactored PdfToPngSaver and AnnotationHandler classes.

Moreover, we added additional parameters to ImageOptions for more flexible retrieval of pages.

  • Parameter for getting pages without annotation
  • Retrieve the range of pages
  • Retrieve only specific count of pages

Given below are some of the major bug fixes.

  • Line width not set in Slides
  • Issue when opening protected with password documents
  • Exception occurred while remove annotations from .xls file

Download our open-source example project here and explore API documentation here.

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Define and Use Custom Objects for PDF Metadata Signature

Metadata signature is a convenient way to sign documents using metadata properties. In GroupDocs.Signature for .NET 18.9, we introduced the feature of signing the PDF documents using various metadata properties including:

  • Author
  • CreateDate
  • MetadataDate
  • CreatorTool
  • ModifyDate
  • Producer
  • Entry
  • Keywords
  • Title
  • Subject
  • Description
  • Creator

You can set all or some of the above-mentioned properties while signing the documents. Since these are the built-in properties, you can only add/update their value.

There could be a situation when the built-in metadata properties may not fulfill your requirements and you may want to use your own set of properties to add metadata signatures. In this case, there should be some way to define and use custom objects as metadata signatures. Well, I am pleased to tell you that this is now possible using the latest version of GroupDocs.Signature for .NET.

Since version 19.4, we have added the feature of signing PDF documents using custom metadata objects. You can define the custom classes that may contain the data members of your choice. You can then use the objects of these classes for the metadata signatures. The following is an example of the custom class.

The following code snippet shows how to use the custom class to add the metadata signature.

Well, this is not enough and I have something more interesting for you. The values of these custom metadata properties appear as plain text and they can easily be accessed and understood by anyone.

To avoid any unauthorized usage of the metadata values, we have introduced a mechanism of encryption/decryption. For this, we have added DataEncryption property to PdfMetadataSignature class and this is how you can apply encryption to the custom metadata objects:

This is surely a valuable addition to the API features which can give you more control over the metadata signature. So why not download the latest version and integrate this feature in your e-signing application?

In case you would have any queries or suggestions, let’s have a conversation over our forum.

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Implement Conversion to WMF Format

WMF is a Windows MetaFile that can contain both vector and bitmap image information. We added support of WMF file format along-with few others in GroupDocs.Conversion for .NET 19.5. You can now convert any supported file format to WMF. Along-with WMF, convert supported documents to EMF.

Convert to EMF

Convert to WMF

Moreover, you can now pay royalties for the use of the API. Yes, metered licensing is now enabled.

New file formats you can convert from:

  • DIB
  • XLT
  • POT

In this release, we also removed obsolete property JpegQuality from ImageSaveOptions.

We’d recommend you to download latest version of the API and share your feedback.

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Footnote Comparison Issue is Resolved

Footnote appears at bottom of the page and used to cite information. Previously, API was not comparing Footnotes correctly. But with the release of GroupDocs.Comparison for .NET 19.5, we fixed this issue. Please have a glance.

But this is not it we have a lot more to tell you. Along with bug fixes, some features and improvements are also introduced.

Lets talk about new features first. Did you ever think of getting coordinates of document changes or differences? It could be confusing at first but let me elaborate this. In your output or resultant document, you get every detail of inserted, deleted or style changed items. What else you can get now is the coordinate details where changes or differences actually occurred. Currently this feature is supported for only PDF, Slide and Diagram formats.

To use this feature you should specify CalculateComponentCoordinates property in ComparisonSettings.

Let’s see a complete use-case.

Coming to the second feature, its about DocumentInfo. This class contains following properties:

  • NumberOfPages (read only) – count of document pages
  • PagesData (read only) – list of PageInfo classes

PageInfo class contains following properties:

  • Width – the width of page
  • Height – the height of page

Following are the improvements:

  • Change detection in tables for Word documents
  • Error handling improvements for all the formats

Major Bug Fixes

  • Can’t get images for HTML files
  • Incorrect difference info in PDF
  • Font detection exception
  • Word separation exception

We’d recommend you to download latest release of the API and enhance your document comparison experience.

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Rendering Documents as PDF

The Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating systems. Based on the PostScript language, each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, vector graphics, raster images and other information needed to display it.

This post demonstrates the usage of the GroupDocs.Viewer APIs (GroupDocs.Viewer for .NET and GroupDocs.Viewer for Java) to render the supported file formats as PDF documents.

How to Render Using GroupDocs.Viewer

Both the viewer handlers (ViewerHtmlHandler,ViewerImageHandler) provide an overloaded method GetPdfFile() which accepts the document name as parameter and returns FileContainer. The File stream can be fetched from the Stream property of the FileContainer in order to save the resultant document on the disk.

The following code snippet shows the way to render a word document as PDF:

Java lovers can write the code like following:

Add Print Action while Rendering as PDF

A Print Action is an option to appear the print popup when open the PDF document in Adobe reader. The popup will appear like below screenshot:

The below given steps can be followed, in order to add print action in the resultant PDF document.

  • Create/initialize PdfFileOptions object
  • Set Transformations property of PdfFileOptions to Transformation.AddPrintAction
  • Call htmlHandler.GetPdfFile method

The .NET code snippet will look like:

The Java code can be written as:

The complete ready to run code sample is available on GitHub.

  • The .NET guys can visit here
  • The code sample for Java lovers is available here

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GroupDocs Pricing Review 2019

Posted on May 15, 2019 by JohnOwens

In this post, we share how we conducted our 2019 GroupDocs Pricing Review.

Last month we shared the news about GroupDocs 2019 pricing change. Our aim behind that change was simple: to make sure we are delivering the best value Document Management API suite on the market.

Each year we review our pricing and licensing model to make sure we’re continually giving developers the functionality and flexibility they need. Providing top quality APIs at fair prices along with permissive licensing models.

How we conducted the review

For this review we gathered a list Vendors in the “.NET Document Viewer” space, ensured they had approximately comparable functionality to GroupDocs.Viewer for .NET and Java and measured the value that developers can get from each API vendor on our list.

Many vendors offer only a small subset of the vast feature-set offered inside GroupDocs.Total. So when performing our review we couldn’t measure a true “like-for-like” comparison. As such, for this review we focused on a single product and looked at 9 other vendors that offered a .NET document viewer.

Pricing Comparison

Purely from a pricing perspective, comparing GroupDocs’ Developer OEM license type at $2997 USD, we found that GroupDocs was the 3rd lowest priced solution on the market.


Vendor Cost for Equivalent OEM style license ($ USD)
Vendor A– $35940
Vendor B– $7400
Vendor C–$5499
Vendor D–$5000
Vendor E–$4995
Vendor F–$4719
Vendor G–$2999
GroupDocs–$2997
Vendor H *–$1995
Vendor I **–$1499

* This vendors Viewer only supports viewing PDF files
** This vendors Viewer is only supported on Silverlight and WPF

As well as being the most competitively priced API, our pricing starts at only $999, so the review doesn’t take our introductory, Developer Small Business license into account.

What Does A GroupDocs License Get You?

From a licensing perspective, our Developer OEM license offers:

  • Category leading functionality
  • 12 month subscription included – On average, products get updates each month, delivering bug fixes and new features.
  • Free Support – Dedicated support teams, also available during free trials. Paid Support options are available.
  • Deployment to unlimited servers – No per server licensing.
  • No extra cost for deployment to staging, build or backup servers.
  • Simple to understand, per developer licensing
  • Ability to upgrade single product purchases to GroupDocs.Total.

Conclusion

GroupDocs offers incredible value for money, market leading functionality, great licensing terms, free support and future proofing through free monthly updates.

If you’re looking into Document Manipulation API’s and you’re not evaluating GroupDocs, get in touch with our Sales Team or Support Team and we’ll be happy to discuss your needs.

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GroupDocs.Viewer for .NET now supports 95+ file formats!

Usually, when we have to shop for groceries, we choose the supermarket where we can get almost every item that we need. This way we don’t have to visit multiple stores for different types of products. Similarly, being specific to the software products, the developers prefer the component that provides a wide range of features regarding their use case so that they don’t have to use multiple solutions.

Let’s be more specific and talk about the online document viewers that are becoming more popular in modern days because of their ability to display the files within the applications without any need of dedicated software programs. Most of the time, the developers want to use an all-in-one document viewer component that can display a wide range of file formats. Thus, they can avoid using multiple components to provide support for multiple file formats.

What if I tell you that it’s now possible to have a document viewer that supports 95+ file formats?

Yes, you read it absolutely correct. In the latest release of GroupDocs.Viewer for .NET, we have added the support of 4 new file formats that are listed below.

  • Device Independent Bitmap (.dib)
  • Microsoft PowerPoint Template (.pot)
  • Electronic Business Card (.vcard)
  • Bzip2 Compressed File (.bz2)

With this addition, the API now supports 95+ file formats and we have the eye on completing our century soon.

So, let’s not wait and use this powerful API for integrating an all-in-one document viewer component in your application. For more news and updates, stay tuned to our blog and keep posting to our forum.

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