Welcome to the footprint project.

Our goal is to produce a set of tools for generating signed PDF documents. The tools were originally planned to generate certificates for JUG events, but can be used to create other parameterized documents. Some guidelines: This is a JUG-oriented project - the needs of JUG leaders will guide the requirements definition and also the development format. The project will be released under the LGPL and will support i18n.

Latest releases

What means FOR? The releases naming of the project are 3-letters codes of international airports. This first release received the name of the International Airport of Fortaleza (FOR) - Pinto Martins.

This release requires J2RE 1.5+

Quickstart - step by step certificates generation

1. Download and install footprint: just download our latest release and unpack it in your computer.
2. Get a digital certificate: you have some options:
   • Create one using keytool: fast and easy for tests. You can also use the test keystore that comes with the release.
   • Ask one for free at CAcert
   • Buy one
3. Create a PDF template: you can use a simple document or include form fields
4. Follow the README file that comes with the release.

User Stories

1. Create List of Event Attendants
   • During the JUG events, a coordinator of the JUG check the presence of the attendants. It can be done with a single list in paper, a registration system or something mor sophisticated like a sim card. The output of this activity is the datasource used in the other stories.
2. Generate the certificates
   • A JUG coordinator submit to footprint a datasource (csv file or database connection), and then the system generates a certification document for each line. First guess is to generate signed PDF documents, but in future we can evaluate another output formats.
3. Validate a certificate through a home page
   • Some one submit an event certificate to the footprint. The system respond VALID or NOT_VALID in some human readable format

Roadmap

The idea is to start with a minimum set of releases:

• footprint-core: generate and sign PDF documents
• footprint-ant: a set of ant tasks to allow automatic generation of signed certificates

There are also some optional packages planned:

• footprint-services: web-services (REST/SOAP) to expose the generator
• footprint-web: a web application or service client
• footprint-desktop: a Swing interface

Acknowledgement

The following Open Source technologies are used by our project: iText - a Free Java-PDF library Legion of the Bouncy Castle - Java cryptography APIs. CsvJdbc - A read-only JDBC driver for Java that uses Comma Separated Value (CSV) files as database tables. OpenOffice - an office suite we are using to produce the certificates templates.