Applications for converting XML to Word / PDF?

September 2, 2009 6:51 PM

Applications for converting XML to Word / PDF?

I'm looking for an application that can convert multiple-record XML files with embedded (encoded) images into human-readable form - Word or PDF preferred.

Ideally, the application would be easily configurable as an end-user productivity tool, eg with a drag-n-drop interface for laying out which fields appear where on the output file (not unlike a mail merge).

Splitting the output into separate docs for each record in the XML would also be a bonus.

Currently, I'm taking a look at Altova Stylevision, but wondering if there are any other products that might also fit these requirements....?

posted by UbuRoivas to computers & internet (6 comments total)

XML is not some particular data format; there are basically an infinite number of ways that information in an XML document might be arranged.

So unless this is a standard XML-based file format (like an OpenOffice document, for example) it's unlikely that you will find any application that does what you're asking for. It'll probably require some custom programming or manual conversion of the data.

Altova primarily makes programming tools or systems that require extensive setup by a programmer - take a look at a screen shot of Stylevision and make sure it jives with what you're expecting before you buy it.

My guess is that what you probably want to do is to try converting it to some data format that would work with the Word mail merge and then do what you're suggesting with normal mail merge utilities.

As a long shot, try forcing Excel to open the XML file and see if it comes out as a spreadsheet. (That probably won't work, though.)
posted by XMLicious at 7:25 PM on September 2

Yes, I'm expecting some manual setup by a programmer / savvy-enough end user.

This would be be based on an XSD file, and should be saveable as a 'template' for interpreting & laying out (identically structured) XML files as they arrive - design once, apply, rinse & repeat.

Excel won't work, unfortunately, because of the binary-encoded image data - it has no idea what to do with it, and spits it out as gobbledegook.
posted by UbuRoivas at 7:38 PM on September 2

I really like Crystal Reports for xml conversion - and the report output can be saved to pdf.

I know you can chuck images *into* a report, but not entirely sure how it would handle embedded images. May be worth having a squiz though.
posted by the.carol.baxter.experience at 8:12 PM on September 2

Oh, in that case Altova is the kind of thing you want. A similar product is Microsoft's InfoPath.

I don't know if the plan is for you to be doing the layout yourself or if you're setting something up for someone else to use, but if I was doing all the steps myself I would see if by chance the binary-coded images can be easily converted to image data URIs in Firefox and then experiment with printing to PDF out of Firefox. (I'm a web software engineer, though.)
posted by XMLicious at 8:45 PM on September 2

This is generally a job for XSLT. In fact the 1st or second chapter of the oreilly book discusses how to use XSLT to take XML and output either .ps or .pdf. If you're not married to PDF, you can do SVG, and keep data around in XML.
posted by pwnguin at 1:13 AM on September 3

pwnguin, how would you handle the images in XSLT? I think you'd have to use a proprietary extension in a particular XSLT processor, wouldn't you?

Sure, XSLT was designed for styling of documents, but it was designed for that in 1998.

I personally am a fan of XSLT but you use it to increase the efficiency of a large and complicated system, not to quickly whip together a solution like this (much less to create a user interface like he's asking for).
posted by XMLicious at 2:49 AM on September 3