Direct Browser Access to Documents

It is possible to view documents and document images directly, bypassing the full user interface, by using one of the following URL structures:

http://server:port/arc?a=vw&lb=library&doctype=doctype&docid=docid

http://server:port/arc?a=vw&lb=library&doctype=doctype&docid=docid&subid=subid

http://server:port/arc?a=vw&lb=library&doctype=doctype&docid=docid&subid=subid&i=1

The first form will load a document-level view page, which includes links to images.  The second will load an image viewer for the specified subid.  In each case, the server and script path must point to the UnForm web interface path, and the library, document type, document ID, and sub ID values must be URL-encoded (certain characters are converted to %hex.  Information about URL-encoding can be found in any HTML guide).  To extract the raw image, without the viewer framework, use the third syntax, which adds i=1.

If the subid specified is simply "@", as in "…&subid=@", then if the document only has an @unform subid (ignoring the @text subid), that PDF document will be viewed.  If there is no @unform subid or there are additional images, such as scanned documents, then the document view page will be shown.

If the browser interface session has expired, then a login screen will be presented before the document is shown.  It may be preferable to configure sessions to last longer, several hours or a day or more, to avoid this requirement.

Alternatively, it is also possible to use an UnForm client (uf101c) to retrieve and optionally view a document image from an archive, or the REST interface to retrieve a document programmatically (see [getimage] in ufrest.ini).