eDocEngine VCL
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Home » Newsletter » May 2017

eDocEngine VCL provides document creation components for several formats. We call these components document creation engines. The document creation engines also provide the option to email the created document.

Using Indy and eDocEngine you can email the document while exporting reports to specific format as well as when creating documents from scratch.

To make the process of emailing easy, eDocEngine implements an adapter framework for the email providers. You need to install the email adapter component based on your email provider class (Indy or other library), place that adapter component on the form, along with the Engine components, and set the EmailAdapter property of the Engine to the placed Email Adapter.

Your eDocEngine installation folder has the Pascal source for an Indy-based e-mail adapter component. You will find it at: [eDocEngine Installation Folder]\Source\EmailAdapters\IndyAdapter (There are separate projects for different IDE version. For example, use the project suffixed with "D14" for Delphi 2010.) If you are using some other emailing component, then you need to build your own e-mail adapter component, keeping the IndyAdapter project as your model. After compilation and installation of the e-mail adapter component, you will find the adapter listed in the "eDocEngine Additional" tab of the Tool Palette. You can also instantiate an object of the adapter in code. If you do that, you will have to assign the created instance to the EmailAdapter property of the engine that you are using to generate the documents.

The Engine components have the property EmailAfterCreate. The output document can be e-mailed to specified recipients if this property is set to True. The e-mail settings including the e-mail recipients need to be specified in the EmailSettings property. To get notified when the engine begins sending messages, set an event handler for the OnEmail event. To recover from e-mail errors, set an event handler for the OnEmailError event.

Scenario 1: Email PDF document created from scratch.

Add the following components to a form:
  1. TgtIndyAdapter
  2. TgtPDFEngine
  3. TButton


In the Button Click event handler, write the following code:
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
  gtPDFEngine1.FileName := 'Demo_TgtEMailSettings.pdf';
  // Set the enail Adapter to Indy
  gtPDFEngine1.EmailAdapter := gtIndyAdapter1;
  gtPDFEngine1.Preferences.EmailAfterCreate := True;
  // Specify e-mail settings
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.Host := 'smtp.googlemail.com';
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.Port := 465;
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.UserID := 'me@gnostice.com';
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.Password := 'password';
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.Subject := 'Season''s greeting';
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.Body.Add('Hi ' + Chr(10) + Chr(10) +
    'Please see attachment.');
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.Date := now();
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.FromName := 'Mamatha';
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.FromAddress := 'me@gnostice.com';
  // Specify recipients
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.RecipientList.Add('janedoe@example.com');
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.RecipientList.Add('jeandoe@example.com');

  // Create the document
  gtPDFEngine1.BeginDoc;
  gtPDFEngine1.Textout(3, 3, 'This document needs to be mailed out.');
  gtPDFEngine1.EndDoc;
end;

procedure TForm1.gtPDFEngine1Email(Sender: TgtCustomDocumentEngine;
  EMailSettings: TgtEmailSettings; var Continue, CancelEMail: Boolean);
begin
  ShowMessage('Mailing ....');
end;

procedure TForm1.gtPDFEngine1EmailError(Sender: TgtCustomDocumentEngine;
  const ErrMsg: string);
begin
  ShowMessage('I could not mail the output document because of this error: "' +
    ErrMsg + '"');
end;

Scenario 2: Export a FastReport report to PDF and Email it automatically.

Add the following components to a form:
  1. TgtIndyAdapter
  2. TgtPDFEngine
  3. TgtFRExportInterface
  4. TButton



In the Button Click event handler, write the following code:
   procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
  // Load report
  frxReport1.PreviewPages.LoadFromFile('FastReport.fp3');
  // Set output file name for the PDF engine
  gtPDFEngine1.FileName := 'Test1';
  // Set the enail Adapter to Indy
  gtPDFEngine1.EmailAdapter := gtIndyAdapter1;
  // Set email settings
  gtPDFEngine1.Preferences.EmailAfterCreate := True;
  // Specify e-mail settings

  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.Host := 'smtp.googlemail.com';
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.Port := 465;
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.UserID := 'me@gnostice.com';
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.Password := 'password';
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.Subject := 'FastReport report to PDF';
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.Body.Add('Hi ' + Chr(10) + Chr(10) +
    'Please see attached report.');
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.Date := now();
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.FromName := 'Mamatha';
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.FromAddress := 'me@gnostice.com';
  // Specify recipients
  gtPDFEngine1.EMailSettings.RecipientList.Add('girish@gnostice.com ');

  // Connect report export interface to PDF engine
  gtFRExportInterface1.Engine := gtPDFEngine1;
  // Export report to PDF
  gtFRExportInterface1.RenderDocument(frxReport1, True, False);
end;

procedure TForm1.gtPDFEngine1EmailSuccess(Sender: TObject);
begin
  Showmessage('Email sent..');
end;