How do I automate the conversion of a HTML page to PDF?
September 10, 2010 12:15 PM   Subscribe

I'm trying to help out my brother in law automate one of his daily work tasks. It involves going to several authenticated intranet sites, saving the data and then converting it to PDF and saving it to a directory. I'm wondering what the best way to go about this is.

I've found a HTML to PDF converter plugin for .NET, but I was hoping there may be a way to do it in VB without any additional cost.

I found a script that converts Word to PDF, but I don't know a way to script the HTML to Word other than this script which relies on the clipboard.

Anyone know a better way?
posted by daHIFI to Computers & Internet (7 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Install CutePDF Writer. Highlight the data you want to print, and when you go to print, choose to print selection, and choose the CutePDF printer. It will bring a box up for you to name your PDF. Go for it.
posted by deezil at 12:23 PM on September 10, 2010


Response by poster: I was looking for something unattended, like a script where we can specify the HTTP addresses and destination directory and schedule the task to run daily.
posted by daHIFI at 12:39 PM on September 10, 2010


I'm going to highlight sikuli again. Dead simple scripting, for anything.
posted by Brent Parker at 12:52 PM on September 10, 2010 [3 favorites]


Response by poster: Sikuli looks neat and I've passed that on to my BiL. I'd still like to know of there's a way to do it in VB though.
posted by daHIFI at 1:12 PM on September 10, 2010


For stuff like this that involves desktop GUIs I just use Autohotkey. Its pretty easy to pick up.
posted by damn dirty ape at 4:10 PM on September 10, 2010


Fake.app if this is for Mac.
posted by ridogi at 4:29 PM on September 10, 2010


I work on a Mac. I use AppleScript to convert from HTML to RTF (I imagine there's more conversion utilities going from HTML to RTF to PDF than HTML to DOC to PDF).

I don't know how this would translate to VB, but I imagine these three links will be useful.
AppleScript Example (6th answer down is a great starting point)
POSIX
Interix
posted by ifandonlyif at 5:39 PM on September 10, 2010


« Older How many to (probably) catch 'em all?   |   Content management for academic dummies Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.