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The goal is to design beautiful templates in InDesign, which are then being used to programmatically generate printable PDFs within a special application connected to a database, so I can fill data from the database into the templates.

I have no idea how to approach this. I found a lot of HTML to PDF conversion related info, but that approach has its limitations.

Did anybody face the same question and might point me in the right direction?

todd
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  • I don't know about _InDesign_, but a convenient solution to transform some mark-up formatted data to `.PDF` is [`XSL Formatting Objects`](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSL_Formatting_Objects/wiki/XSL_Formatting_Objects). – zx485 Oct 15 '18 at 20:57
  • in the article you mentioned, i found https://www.w3.org/TR/css3-page/, which I think is (partially?) supported by openhtmltopdf. But the issue I'm facing here is, that the document design part should really be done by a designer and not by a programmer. Is it possible to use elements in a PDF document as placeholders and replace them with data programmatically? – todd Oct 15 '18 at 21:20
  • You can easily export an InDesign file to PDF using extendscript. It can also be used to insert content in an InDesign file. [This](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3744140/batch-export-indesign-file-to-pdf-with-custom-footer-for-each-client) may get you started – cybernetic.nomad Oct 16 '18 at 02:19
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    The best place to start with InDesign programming is the official documentation: https://www.adobe.com/devnet/indesign/documentation.html. Also, you might consider using InDesign Server. To connect to the database you can use plugins or InDesign scripting. – Nicolai Kant Oct 16 '18 at 13:34
  • The InDesign Server is the least attractive option. It would even require us to run a Windows Server for it. – todd Oct 17 '18 at 06:14
  • Besides the InDesign Server the official adobe documentation is mostly about extending adobe products. – todd Oct 17 '18 at 06:14
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    I posted a link to the scripting guides, what is it to do with extending of a product? Also, why do you need to switch to the Windows for InDesign Server if there is an OSX version? – Nicolai Kant Oct 17 '18 at 10:46

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Yes, the scenario you described can be fully handled by InDesign Scripting using ExtendScript. I have done this in the past several times and it works quite well. The key in my opinion is to have a designer prepare the file for you as finished as possible and make good use of the built in InDesign automations. That means they will do the layout, but also set up all the paragraph styles, character styles, object styles and possibly grep styles as well as master spreads for each different page.

Then the job of the script that you run will mostly be to fill in the contents and to assign the mentioned styles and master spread as needed. If everything is set up properly, most of the layout should fall into place automatically.

Also, contrary to the comments to your question, I don't think you need InDesign server for that. Especially if you run everything locally anyways.

mdomino
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