PDFlib PHP place SVG into table cell - php

Question

I want to create a table where every item gets a hyphen next to it, which is provided as an svg graphic. I tried to load it into a table cell similar to an image, but that does not seem to work. I also couldn't find anything related to that in the PDFlib Cookbok.
I then tried to just place the graphic outside of the table, but now I have the problem, that since it's not connected to the table, the hyphens do not go to a new page, if the table is too large for the current one and loads the rest of the content on that new page. So this does not seem to do the trick either. Does anyone know a solution on how to load the svg graphic inside of the table, so it renders with it's content (meaning they also go on new pages)?
Here's the code where I tried to load the svg into the table:
## add hyphen to table ##
$image = $p->load_graphic("auto", $hyphen, "");
if ($image == 0) {
echo("Couldn't load $image: " . $p->get_errmsg());
exit(1);
}
$optlistHyphen = "colwidth=2% margintop=3 graphic=" . $image;
$tbl = $p->add_table_cell($tbl, $col1, $row, '', $optlistHyphen);
if ($tbl == 0) {
echo("Error: " . $p->get_errmsg());
exit(1);
}
And here's the code of my current try, where I placed the graphic outside of the table:
## add hyphen ##
// load hyphen
$graphics = $p->load_graphics('auto', $hyphen, '');
if ($graphics == 0) {
echo('Couldn not load logo image: ' . $p->get_errmsg());
exit(1);
}
// place hyphen
$buf = "scale=0.25";
$p->fit_graphics($graphics, $hyphenX, $hyphenY, $buf);
// calculate new height for hyphen
$hyphenY = $hyphenY - 16;
// Add new empty table cell
$optlistTableCellHyphen = "colwidth=2%";
$tbl = $p->add_table_cell($tbl, $col1, $row, '', $optlistTableCellHyphen);
if ($tbl == 0) {
echo("Error: " . $p->get_errmsg());
exit(1);
}
(both these code snippets are inside of a foreach for the table content)
Also here's an image of the current ouput with the last "solution":

Answer 1

Also from your explanation it is not clear to me why placing an SVG file in a table cell should not work. It may be important to use the fitgraphics options to define the size and placement of the graphic. (See also PDFlib 9.3.1 API Reference, Chapter 5.3, Table 5.16.).
<?php
try {
$searchpath = "../data";
$p = new PDFlib();
$tbl = 0;
# This means we must not check return values of load_font() etc.
$p->set_option("errorpolicy=exception stringformat=utf8");
/* Set the search path for font files */
$p->set_option("SearchPath={{" . $searchpath . "}}");
/* open new PDF file; insert a file name to create the PDF on disk */
$p->begin_document("", "");
$p->begin_page_ext(0, 0, "width=a4.width height=a4.height");
$graphics = $p->load_graphics('auto', 'PDFlib-logo.svg', '');
for ($i=1; $i < 10; $i++){
$tf = $p->create_textflow('Feature ' . $i . '<nextline>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna ', 'fontname=NotoSerif-Regular encoding=unicode fontsize=12');
$tbl = $p->add_table_cell($tbl, 1, $i, '', 'colwidth=30 graphics=' . $graphics . ' fitgraphics={position={center top}} margin=3');
$tbl = $p->add_table_cell($tbl, 2, $i, '', 'colwidth=250 textflow=' . $tf . ' rowheight=10');
}
$p->fit_table($tbl, 50, 50, 545, 792, "stroke = {line=horother}");
$p->end_page_ext("");
$p->end_document("");
$buf = $p->get_buffer();
$len = strlen($buf);
header("Content-type: application/pdf");
header("Content-Length: $len");
header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=sample.pdf");
print $buf;
}
catch (PDFlibException $e) {
die("PDFlib exception occurred in this sample:\n" .
"[" . $e->get_errnum() . "] " . $e->get_apiname() . ": " .
$e->get_errmsg() . "\n");
}
catch (Throwable $e) {
die("PHP exception occurred: " . $e->getMessage() . "\n");
}
$p = 0;
?>
I have put together a very simple example which only uses sample resources from the PDFlib packages. To keep the code shorter, I set errorpolicy=exception.
This code produces this output which should be very close to what you are looking for. (only one page here, but you can probably already see the difference to your implementation)
If you want to place the graphics outside the table, it might be useful to use info_table() to get the Y-positions for the vertical lines after placing the table (see PDFlib 9.3.1 API Reference, Chapter 5.3, Table 5.19).
This allows you to determine exactly where you would have to place the graphics, even if it continues on another page (instance).