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AndyPetersonCFUGMgr
AndyPetersonCFUGMgr
Participating Frequently
October 29, 2019
Answered

CFDocument Processing SpeedTest / Results and Inquiry

  • October 29, 2019
  • 5 replies
  • 3027 views

Hello,

 

We want to improve the performance of the CFDocument tag.  We are generating 6000 pdf pages using cfdocument by looping through a text file, formatting it and creating it using cfdocument tag. We are on CF 2018 Update 5.

 

Regardless of how much RAM and CPU we are throwing at CF, we cannot seem to convice CF that that RAM/CPU is eligible for use for this process. Whether the server has 16 GB RAM or 256 GB, the PMT shows that there is no differnce in the perfomance, and the amount of time it takes to finish processing doesn't seem to depend on either RAM or CPU. Should we be looking elsewhere (I/O) to speed this up, or is CFDocument simply the "little engine that could"?

 

We have been updating JVM heap sizes for minim and maximum and increased MaxMetaSpaceSize. At this time, there are no competing threads on this test server - just the CFDocument process.

 

Please let us know if there are any other settings or resources or other things to look for to increase the performance and generate the pdf faster. If not, we have found an alternative solution, but would prefer to learn more as to whether CFDocument processing can be improved. Thanks in advance.

 

The sample code below simply writes "hello world" to a pdf. With 16GB RAM and 6 processors, it's taking 30 seconds to write 100 pages to a pdf document. We are looking for a solution to drop this down to a fraction of the time.

 

 

      This topic has been closed for replies.
      Correct answer BKBK

      30 seconds is indeed the time ColdFusion requires, I'm afraid.

      To see this, use the following code, which saves the PDF as a file.

      <cfset startTime=getTickCount()>

<cfdocument format="PDF" pagetype="letter" marginbottom="0" margintop="0.21" marginleft="0.21" marginright="0.26" 
 orientation="portrait" fontembed="true" scale="100" backgroundvisible="true" overwrite="true" bookmark="false" localurl="true" filename="myTestDoc.pdf">
<cfloop from="1" to="100" index="i">
	<cfdocumentsection>
		Hello World!
	</cfdocumentsection>
</cfloop>	
</cfdocument>
Processing time (to nearest second): <cfoutput>#int((getTickCount()-startTime)/1000 + 0.5)# s</cfoutput>

<cfabort >

      5 replies

      Charlie Arehart
      Community Expert
      Charlie ArehartCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      October 13, 2020

      I don't see anyone here proposing the CFHTMLTOPDF tag that was added in CF11--and which ends up using WKHTMLTTOPDF under the covers (running in the separate CF "addon" service, assuming one installs that with CF, or can install later.)

       

      I realize someone may well pipe up with some scenario in which cfhtmltopdf did not work for them, while talking directly to wkhtmltopdf did. One thing to note is that the library surely has changed since CF11, and may have within updates to CF 11, 2016, or 2018, so sometimes the past experiences people report no longer apply.

       

      Anyway, I just wanted to throw this out as something to consider. It's not at all to knock Jamo's helpful suggestion and code offered. I'm sure it will help many. Just saying that for some folks, switching from cfdocument to cfhtmltopdf may suffice to solve past problems with cfdocument (and there were many).

      /Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart. org)
        C
        coder1957**
        Known Participant
        October 18, 2020

        Are you seriously saying, Charlie, that using WKHTMLTTOPDF and cfhtmltopdf are the same code???

        You may have just saved me a lot of time trying it as an alternative.  

        htmltopdf is broken in cf2018.  

        So WKHTMLTTOPDF is also?

         

         

        BKBK
        Community Expert
        BKBKCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        October 18, 2020

        > using WKHTMLTTOPDF and cfhtmltopdf are the same code???

        No, they are not. The keyword is "using". 

         

        In ColdFusion 2018, you may use the operator "new java()" to instantiate Java objects. But it doesn't mean that instantiating an object in Java will yield the same code as instantiating an object in ColdFusion.

        BKBK
        Community Expert
        BKBKCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        October 30, 2019

        Suggestion: try wkhtmlToPDF

        For example, I used it as follows.

        1) I downloaded the 64Bit Windows version and installed it on my test server.

        2) The files testFile.cfm and htmlToPdf.cfm are in the same directory, namely, wwwroot/workspace/CF_Project/wkhtmlToPdf/. The style "page-break-before: always;" generates a new page on each pass of the loop.

        3) I then ran htmlToPdf.cfm to generate and save the 100 page test PDF.

        4) The processing time was 1 second. 🙂

        testFile.cfm

         

        <cfloop from="1" to="100" index="i">
<div style="page-break-before: always;">
	Hello World
</div>
</cfloop>

         

        htmlToPdf.cfm

        <cfset startTime=getTickCount()>

<!--- Set up wkhtmltopdf's header and footer options --->
<cfset wkHTMLToPDFHeader = '--header-spacing 2 --header-left "Header_left_text" --header-right "Header_right_text" --header-font-size 9 --header-line --header-font-name opensans_regular'>
<cfset wkHTMLToPDFFooter = '--footer-left "footer_left_text" --footer-right "footer_right_text" --footer-font-size 9 --footer-line --footer-font-name opensans_regular'>

<!--- Set up all wkhtmltopdf's options --->
<!---
Use
-B or --margin-bottom
-R or --margin-right
-T or --margin-top
-L or --margin-left 
-s or --page-size 
--->
<cfset wkHTMLToPDFOptions = "-B 25.4mm -R 25.4mm -T 25.4mm -L 25.4mm -s Letter --disable-smart-shrinking --zoom 0.9 " & wkHTMLToPDFHeader & " " & wkHTMLToPDFFooter>


	<cfexecute  name="C:\Program Files\wkhtmltopdf\bin\wkhtmltopdf.exe" 
		arguments="#wkHTMLToPDFOptions# http://localhost:8500/workspace/CF_Project/wkhtmlToPdf/testFile.cfm #expandpath('testDoc.pdf')#"  timeout="20">
	</cfexecute>
Processing time (to nearest second): <cfoutput>#int((getTickCount()-startTime)/1000 + 0.5)#</cfoutput>

<cfabort >
          James Moberg
          James Moberg
          Inspiring
          October 30, 2019

          I posted a similar response earlier this morning and my post was promptly flagged as spam and deleted.  I ended up posting my response on my personal blog so that it wouldn't get deleted and privately contacting Andy.  (It's possible that the new forum doesn't like outbound links to tumblr blogs.)

            BKBK
            Community Expert
            BKBKCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
            Community Expert
            October 30, 2019

            30 seconds is indeed the time ColdFusion requires, I'm afraid.

            To see this, use the following code, which saves the PDF as a file.

            <cfset startTime=getTickCount()>

<cfdocument format="PDF" pagetype="letter" marginbottom="0" margintop="0.21" marginleft="0.21" marginright="0.26" 
 orientation="portrait" fontembed="true" scale="100" backgroundvisible="true" overwrite="true" bookmark="false" localurl="true" filename="myTestDoc.pdf">
<cfloop from="1" to="100" index="i">
	<cfdocumentsection>
		Hello World!
	</cfdocumentsection>
</cfloop>	
</cfdocument>
Processing time (to nearest second): <cfoutput>#int((getTickCount()-startTime)/1000 + 0.5)# s</cfoutput>

<cfabort >
              James Moberg
              James Moberg
              Inspiring
              October 30, 2019

              I replied, but my post regarding how we generate really good PDFs using ColdFusion has been marked as spam by some unknown administrator.

                AndyPetersonCFUGMgr
                AndyPetersonCFUGMgrAuthor
                Participating Frequently
                October 30, 2019

                I'd love to hear your response - you can ping me at andy.peterson at illinoiscomptroller.gov

                  James Moberg
                  James Moberg
                  Inspiring
                  October 30, 2019

                  As an alternative, could you save a single HTML to the file system and then try using the opensource WKHTMLTOPDF executable to generate the HTML.  (You can add page breaks & "keep sections together" using CSS.  A global header & footer requires 2 separate HTML templates."Page X of Y" can also be added using javascript.)  I shared a basic CFTag if you'd like to integrate within your project.  (Someone wrote a CFC, but I can't find it online anymore.)

                  We quit using CFDocument back in CF8.  Occasionally we'll compare the CFDocument output against WKHTMLTOPDF and we're still very glad that we're using WKHTMLTOPDF.  (I believe CFDocument uses outdated libraries and hasn't been updated in a very long time.)  WKHTMLTOPDF generates PDFs faster, requires less RAM, generates smaller PDF files and is compatible with CSS3/HTML5.  We've also got absolute-positioned scaled SVG images to work, whereas we weren't able to reliably genereate 1px borders using CFDocument.  We can even use FontAwesome icons when generating our report. Using WKHTMLTOPDF means that we can easily perform the HTML-to-PDF conversion in the background or separate server without using a single-threaded, long-timout CFThread. (We use ajax or EventSource to determine completion status.)

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