Hi @jacob2, no Iām afraid PDF Creator needs all the elements itās PDF-ing to be visible on the page the user is generating the PDF from.
However, you may be interested in PDF Potion. This is a new Bubble PDF solution that I recently released. It can generate PDFs of pages that are not visible (indeed, thatās how itās designed to work).
You can check out the PDF Potion website or the forum launch post for more info.
Hi again @kapitani.tech, Iāve just released a new version of the plugin (version 1.19.9) that has a beta feature for adding page breaks to specific elements.
For example, in the below app I have 3 groups and am creating a PDF using the ID attributes āgroup-1, group-2, group-3ā:
Youāll note that all 3 groups appear on the same page.
However, if I add the ID attribute āgroup-2ā to the new āElement Page Breaksā fieldā¦
I am concerned about generating a PDF before all elements are fully rendered on the page. In the case of a repeating group with a large amount of data (such as a repeating group within a repeating group), it takes time for all elements to be displayed. Is there a way to prevent this issue?
Hi @nextwall22, a very reasonable concern! The trick Iāve found is to ensure youāve ticked the āload all items immediatelyā option on the repeating group. This ensures everything is loaded and that PDF Creator captures everything correctly.
Hope that helps. If youāve any other questions just let me know
New page-counter option: June-24 update
Just released version 1.2.0 of PDF Creator. Now if you add āpage-counter-2ā to the left/right footer/header fieldsā¦
Are you using the Classify plugin? This plugin unfortunately causes an issue with ID attributes are interpreted by PDF Creator, which means you canāt use the around an ID attribute.
If youāre not using the Classify plugin, can you confirm if this issue is also happening with elements where youāre not using the around an ID?
Hi again @nextwall22, Iāve just released a new version of the plugin (version 1.20.1) that has a new special command for repeating groups.
Simply add an * before and after the ID attribute of the repeating group you are PDF-ing and you will get the same affect as the 's. For example, if your repeating group has the ID attribute:
my-repeating-group
You can add a * before and after to get:
(I had to use an image to avoid become formatting issues )
There is no conflict with the Classify plugin when you use this command.
The error no longer occurs when starting the workflow! Thank you very much.
However, there is one point that concerns me. According to the tutorial, when adding to the repeating group, it seems that each child group of the repeating group can be split into separate PDF pages. But when using *, it appears that a few pixels from the top of each element are being included in the previous PDF page. I created 19 pages in my test PDF. Could you please check this?
The * and approaches use the exact same logic, so Iām afraid this is an issue with both approaches. Just to note that these approaches are not specifically designed to allow each cell of a repeating group cell to start on an new page.
However, this is still unusual behaviour. Iāll look into this and see what I can do. Will get back to you by tomorrow with an update
Hi again @nextwall22, Iāve spent quite a bit of time looking into this and Iām afraid itās not good news.
There appears to be a bug with the underlying javascript library that PDF Creator is built on thatās causing this. Quite a few other people have noted this bug when generating very long PDFs, but there doesnāt seem to be any solution.
Iām very sorry about this. I wish I could offer a fix, but because the issue is with the underlying library, itās a bit out of my hands
However, it works a bit differently to PDF Creator (you need to set up the PDF in a different page of your app) and is more expensive (as I have to run my own server). Just said Iād mention it in case itās of interest; please donāt take this as me trying to upsell you the more expensive solution
Very sorry again for this issue with PDF Creator. If I uncover a fix for the bug I will of course implement it and let you know.
If thereās any other way I can help, please let me know.
Thank you for investigating this. I liked the features of PDF Creator, so itās unfortunate, but I would appreciate it if you could keep me in mind when creating a new plugin!
If PDF Potion can support pages that dynamically retrieve values with privacy roles or filters, I would consider using it.
I was impressed by Alexās prompt and sincere response. I look forward to the creation of another great plugin.
Thanks for the kind words @nextwall22 and appreciate your understanding on this.
Yes, I can confirm PDF Potion can support pages with dynamic content and it respects privacy rules. You can learn more about how to enable all of this in this short video