Hi Vandana,

I checked the OOTB 'HTMLTOPDF' and I don't believe it currently allows for the 'setPermissions()' call which is available in PD4ML at this point: I will log an ENH request for this : so our Product Management Teams will be able to review this request whether it would be a viable and desirable thing to include in a future release of PRPC.

[ EDIT - I have logged the FEEDBACK/ENHANCEMENT for this  FDBK-12511:"Request for 'Password-Protected' PDFs option in HTMLTOPDF." ]

You could probably create a custom ACTIVITY which initializes the 'PD4ML' engine yourself, and add in the required call to do this: the downside of this approach is that you lose all the other handling (of CSS/IMAGES etc) that HTMLTOPDF (or indeed the Public API call 'PDFUtils') does for you.

So instead of doing that: you can 'post-process' the PDF making use of the 'PDFBox' library - which also ships with OOTB PRPC. See this previous POST (regarding getting Page Counts from a PDF) for more information on this.

In the meantime, I have thrown together an ACTIVITY which does just this - here's the code: (I happened to do this on 7.1.7 - it should still work on 7.1.8 (and lower versions as well: just check your system [see the post linked above] for what version of 'PDFBOX' you have)).

And here's the JavaStep that does the conversion - note how we have already transferred some PARAM objects to 'mirrored' LOCAL variables here (just make the Javacode more readable IMHO).

com.pega.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument doc=null;
com.pega.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.encryption.AccessPermission ap=null;
com.pega.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.encryption.StandardProtectionPolicy spp=null;

//Get the byte array of original PDF (transferred from Param->Local Variable in previous step).
    byte[] byteArray=(byte[]) PDFDocument;
    java.io.ByteArrayInputStream bis=null;

    bis = new java.io.ByteArrayInputStream(byteArray);

    try {
        doc=com.pega.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument .load( bis );
        ap=new com.pega.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.encryption.AccessPermission();
        ap.setReadOnly();
        spp=new com.pega.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.encryption.StandardProtectionPolicy( UserName, Password, ap);
        doc.protect(spp);
        java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream out = new java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream();
        doc.save(out);
        PDFDocument=out.toByteArray(); // Replace old byte array with newly generated one.
    }
    catch(Exception e) { throw new PRRuntimeException(e); }
    finally {
      if (bis!=null) {
        try { bis.close(); }
        catch(Exception e) { throw new PRRuntimeException(e); }
}
    if(doc!=null) {
      try { doc.close(); }
      catch(Exception e) { throw new PRRuntimeException(e); }
    }
    }

By the way: I'm not very happy about my try/catch/finally logic there, looks to be overcomplicated - so I won't be offended if anybody wants to tidy up this !!!

NOTES:

1. PRPC ships with a 're-badged' PDFBOX here - so that the package name is not 'org.apache[...]', but 'com.pega.apache[...]'.

2. We are using the OOTB 'VIEW' activity here to actually display the PDF: (I missed this off on the first screenshot, to concentrate on the PROPERTY-SETs).

3. We are using the 'Pass current parameter page' for both HTMLTOPDF and VIEW - which makes it easier (IMHO) to 'chain-up' steps here.

4. The PDFBOX library wants both a username (I used 'gcs' in my test) and a password (I used 'topsecret' in my test) - but when I open the PDF (with 'Foxit' as it happens) - only the password was asked for.

I'll attach the result here for reference.

Cheers

John

One other thing: I *think* this is a problem with my Foxit installation - I (most of the time, but not always?) get this error when I enter the password - the PDF shows ok:

----

[FoxItCloud]

( X ) Encountered an improper argument

----

Does anybody else get the same error when opening in Foxit (or indeed Adobe Acrobat?)

[ EDIT: pretty sure the error is Foxit-specific - just opened up the same PDF on a different machine using Adobe Acrobat - no errors for me. ]