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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Small and medium business | Business Central, N... / Display PDFs from shar...
Small and medium business | Business Central, N...
Suggested answer

Display PDFs from shared folder in BC On-Prem without saving them to the database

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Posted on by EC-18061147-0 9

Hi community,

I'm working with Business Central On-Premise version 25.1 (Platform 25.0.25866.0 + Application 25.1.25873.25900), in a hybrid code environment.

I already have a fully developed embedded PDF viewer (not the lite version), and until now I’ve been loading documents from the database using Document Attachment.

Now I want to change the approach and read PDF files directly from a local shared folder, for example: \\SRV_NAME\FOLDER_NAME , without storing them in the database.

My goal is to:

  1. Read the PDF file from the UNC path.
  2. Load it into a TempBlob.
  3. Display it embedded in Business Central using the viewer I already have.
  4. Delete the TempBlob after viewing.

The Business Central server has access to the shared folder, and the service runs under a user with the necessary permissions.

I don’t yet have the code to read from disk, and I’m not sure how to do it properly in AL (especially in OnPrem extensions). Could someone help me implement this flow step-by-step, with working AL code compatible with OnPrem?

Thanks in advance!

  • Suggested answer
    YUN ZHU Profile Picture
    YUN ZHU 85,982 Super User 2025 Season 1 on at
    Display PDFs from shared folder in BC On-Prem without saving them to the database
    You can search for previous NAV solutions, which are still available in BC On-Pre version.
    For example,
     
    Thanks.
    ZHU
  • Gerardo Rentería García Profile Picture
    Gerardo Rentería Ga... 20,949 Most Valuable Professional on at
    Display PDFs from shared folder in BC On-Prem without saving them to the database
  • Suggested answer
    Mohamed Amine Mahmoudi Profile Picture
    Mohamed Amine Mahmoudi 24,507 Super User 2025 Season 1 on at
    Display PDFs from shared folder in BC On-Prem without saving them to the database
     
    try this procedure :
    procedure LoadPDFIntoTempBlob(UNCPath: Text; var TempBlob: Record TempBlob): Boolean
    var
        InStream: InStream;
        FileManagement: Codeunit "File Management";
        TempFile: Text;
    begin
        // Confirm path exists and ends with ".pdf"
        if not FileManagement.ServerFileExists(UNCPath) then begin
            Error('File not found: %1', UNCPath);
        end;

        if not StrEndsWith(LowerCase(UNCPath), '.pdf') then
            Error('File must be a PDF: %1', UNCPath);

        // Open the file as InStream
        FileManagement.ServerFileToInStream(UNCPath, InStream);

        // Prepare TempBlob
        TempBlob.Init();
        TempBlob.Blob.CreateInStream(InStream);
        TempBlob.Insert();

        exit(true);
    end;
    Best regards,
    Mohamed Amine MAHMOUDI

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