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Creating Custom PDF Portfolio Layouts
Updated 11/13/2009

Part 7: Adding Resources and Files

This article explains how to add additional files and resources to the Navigator of your PDF Portfolio.

If you remember from part one of this series, your Navigator can use resources that are stored in the .nav file. These files must be stored in a folder called "navigator" in the root of the .NAV file and you can reference these files from your .SWF application through URLs as in the example code below.

<mx:Image source="navigator/ActionScriptHeader.png"/>

But what do you do when you want to allow your users to add their own images (a logo for example) and modify other aspects of the Navigator and then save those into the PDF file for use later? Well, the Acrobat ActionScript API provides the tools to do just that.

Working with Resources:
The ICollection object has three methods related to resources; addResource, deleteResource, and writeResource. You can only add resources when the document permissions allow it to be modified. The Acrobat ActionScript API handles this pretty nicely. The permissions property of the Collection can be used to determine if your Navigator can write to the file. There are two cases where a Collection cannot be modified by a Navigator; the file is being viewed in the Adobe Reader and the file is being viewed in Adobe Acrobat but is secured. Unlike Acrobat JavaScript, the Navigator cannot tell if the PDF file is being viewed in Reader or Acrobat. By using the permissions property, you don't need to differentiate between the two conditions. The code below shows how to check for the ability to modify a PDF Portfolio.

if (_host.collection.permissions.check("Document", "Modify") == true) 
{ 
//You can save changes 
} 
else 
{ 
//You can’t 
} 

addResource:
The addResource method will bring up a file browsing dialog prompting the user to select the needed file. File types that are not blacklisted by Acrobat will be added to the resource dictionary of the PDF Portfolio. The resource can later be accessed by any call that can read data from a URL. You can set the path where the resource will be added. It must be a relative path, "/" separated, but with no leading "/" and must start with "Navigator/". If the URL does not have a file extension (that is, it does not contain a '.'), then the file extension of the added file (if any) will be appended. If the URL ends with "/", then the entire file name of the selected file will be appended. This makes it pretty easy to find things later. Because there is no way to enumerate the resources, you'll want to devise a way to keep track of what was added or deleted.

deleteResource:
The same thing as above... but in reverse. Basically, you just pass in the path to the resource to be deleted. It must match a path used previously on a successful call to addResource or writeResource. Again, because there is no way to enumerate the resources, you'll want to devise a way to keep track of what was added or deleted.

writeResource:
This one is a little different from addResource in that no dialog is presented. You need to start out with an object that you want to write then convert that to a ByteArray. The method then replaces the contents of the Navigator resource if one exists for the given path or creates a new one. The naming and permission rules that I outlined above for also apply.

After downloading this example and compiling the code, you can install the Navigator by following these simple steps.

Installation:

Windows:

1. From Windows, select "Start" then "Run". Paste the following line into the text box and press enter
   
   %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Adobe\Acrobat\9.0\
   
   
2. Create a directory called "Navigators" if you don't already have one
3. Drag the "_01_HelloWorld.swf" file to the "Navigators" directory
4. Restart Acrobat if it's running.
5. In the "Edit PDF Portfolio" panel you should see an "Other Layouts" category in addition to "Basic Layouts"

OSX:

1. Browse to /Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/9.0_x86 in your user Library folder
2. Create a directory called "Navigators" if you don't already have one
3. Drag the "_01_HelloWorld.swf" file to this location in Finder.
4. Restart Acrobat if it's running.
5. In the "Edit PDF Portfolio" panel you should see an "Other Layouts" category in addition to "Basic Layouts"

Files:
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