Using ApacheFOP v1.0 in .NET application

Question

Has anyone successfully complied the Apache FOP v1.0 library to a .NET DLL? I am using the IKVM syntax found at http://onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2004/08/18/ikvm.html; however, the compiled DLL seems to be incomplete. For example, I cannot instantiate FopFactory object as:

using org.apache.fop.apps;

namespace Utils
{
     public class PdfRender
     {
          public void Render()
          {
            FOUserAgent foUserAgent = fop.getUserAgent();
            FopFactory fopFactory = FopFactory.newInstance();
          }
     }
}

Answer 1

(Courtesy of the folks on the FOP Users Group)

Prerequisite: IKVM 0.44.0.5 installed.

1. Download FOP 1.0 from http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/1.0/index.html#download
2. Copy all JAR files to C:\Fop\Build\
3. Open a command prompt and run the following: ikvmc -target:library -reference:IKVM.OpenJDK.Core.dll -recurse:C:\Fop\Build\\*.jar -version:1.0 -out:C:\Fop\fop.dll
4. In your Visual Studio project, add references to fop.dll, IKVM.OpenJDK.*.dll and IKVM.Runtime.dll

Answer 2

ClatB`s worked here too. Just remmeber to add ALL IKVM libs to your project (Worked with Fop 1.1 and IKVM 7.2.4630.5).

Answer 3

I know this is an old thread but it still took some research to get this working. It is now available with NuGet in Visual Studio 2013. The NuGet package is called crispin.fop. In my code below, I pass in an "fop" file and the new PDF file I want created and "voila", it is created.

    using org.apache.fop.tools;
    using org.apache.fop.apps;
    using org.xml.sax;
    using java.io;

    public void GeneratePDF(string foFile, string pdfFile)
    {
        OutputStream os = new BufferedOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(new java.io.File(pdfFile)));

        try
        {
            FopFactory fopFactory = FopFactory.newInstance();
            Fop fop = fopFactory.newFop("application/pdf", os);
            FOUserAgent foUserAgent = fop.getUserAgent();
            javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory factory = javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory.newInstance();
            javax.xml.transform.Transformer transformer = factory.newTransformer();
            javax.xml.transform.Source src = new javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource(new java.io.File(foFile));
            javax.xml.transform.Result res = new javax.xml.transform.sax.SAXResult(fop.getDefaultHandler());
            transformer.transform(src, res);
        }

        catch (Exception ex)
        {                
            throw ex;
        }

        finally
        {
            os.close();
        }
    }

Answer 4

ClayB's worked for me. Please keep in mind point 2 "Copy all JAR files to C:\Fop\Build\".
"all" is very important. See here the list of jar's I needed:
- fop.jar
- avalon-framework-4.2.0.jar
- batik-all-1.7.jar
- commons-io-1.3.1.jar
- commons-logging-1.0.4.jar
- serializer-2.7.0.jar
- xalan-2.7.0.jar
- xercesImpl-2.7.1.jar
- xml-apis-1.3.04.jar
- xml-apis-ext-1.3.04.jar
- xmlgraphics-commons-1.4.jar
All the jar's other than fop you will find in folder "lib".

Answer 5

I tried the approach suggested by ClayB without any success.

I used the combinations of IKVM 0.44 and 0.46 with FOP 0.95 and 1.0. But nothing worked! There're some java libs are missing and causing errors. There's also an .net exception occured: could not load type in System.Security namespace. I even tried to compile each .jar file to a dll as suggested by Avik Sengupta at http://onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2004/08/18/ikvm.html, but got stuck on lib\batik-all-1.7.jar. Unless anyone have got any further workrounds, I'm convinced this approach is no longer working with the latest kits.

However, I found a different approach which allows one to call FOP from .net. I hope this will help someone:

try {
    ProcessStartInfo p = new ProcessStartInfo(fopPath + "fop.bat");
    p.Arguments = String.Format("{0} {1}", foFilePath, pdfFilePath);
    p.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
    p.WorkingDirectory = fopPath;
    Process proc = new System.Diagnostics.Process();
    proc.StartInfo = p;

    proc.Start();
    proc.WaitForExit();
    }
catch() {
}

Please read the original article at: http://www.ptperalta.net/index.php/technology/using-apache-fop-in-net.html