Generating a PDF of what the user sees, and sending it as a binary stream to the server

Question

Hi All,
On the final page of our Flex app, we allow the user to print out a copy of everything they've entered for their own records.
I'm wondering if there is a way for me, programmatically, to generate a PDF document that is the same as their printout (I pass a particular container to the "print" button I've got for the user), and send those bytes back to the server.  We can store this PDF along with all the rest of their data, and it would be useful as a "snapshot" of exactly what the user saw when they submitted their application.
I'm looking into Flex PDF generation, but so far haven't gotten this figured out.  I thought some folks here might be able to point me in the right direction.
Thanks!
  -Josh

Answer 1

Here is how you can take a snapshot.
import mx.graphics.ImageSnapshot;
import mx.graphics.codec.IImageEncoder;
import mx.graphics.codec.PNGEncoder;
import mx.utils.Base64Encoder;
private function uploadImage(rSource:IBitmapDrawable):void
                    var tBitmapData:BitmapData = ImageSnapshot.captureBitmapData(rSource);
                    var tEnc:IImageEncoder = new PNGEncoder();
                    var tBA:ByteArray = tEnc.encode(tBitmapData);
                    var tB64:Base64Encoder = new Base64Encoder();
                    tB64.encodeBytes(tBA);
                    // send tB64.toString() using POST to the server to save the image.
// call
uploadImage(this) // where parameter is an object to get the snapshot of. Can be anything including Application. ("this" in my case).