So I'm trying to create a PDF invoice for a garage and I have the below currently (I know the variables are missing but they had personnel info in for the testing on localhost as well as some of the blank text in cells). So anyway a few things!
I want the Work and the corresponding amount on the same line which I have done some research on and it still wont work as I don't fully understand it, is someone able to help on how it works so I can implement it?
The idea is to create the invoice saving it to a SQL database, which I have done, with the added option to either print the document straight out or send via e-mail to the customer is it possible to Save the PDF to send as an attach through PHPMailer(Which I will be getting to grips with soon!). Or print straight from this?
Ideally wouldn't want to PDF to clog up after creating.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, need anything give me a shout!
<?php
require ('fpdf.php');
$pdf = new FPDF();
$pdf->AddPage();
$pdf->SetFont('Arial','',24);
//Cell (Width, height, text, border, end line, 'align')
$pdf->Cell(189,25,'Cheshire West Vehicle Ltd Invoice', 0,1, 'C');
$pdf->SetFont('Arial','',14);
//CWV & Customer Address
$pdf->Cell(65,5,'',0,0);
$pdf->Cell(124, 5, $firstname.' '.$lastname, 0, 1, 'R');
$pdf->Cell(40,5,'',0,0);
$pdf->Cell(149 ,5, $housenumber.', '.$postcode, 0 ,1, 'R');
$pdf->Cell(30,5,'',0,0);
$pdf->Cell(159,5,$contactnumber,0,1,'R');
$pdf->Cell(30,5,'',0,0);
$pdf->Cell(159,5,$email,0,1,'R');
//Date
$pdf->SetFont('Arial','',12);
$pdf->Cell(189,15,$date,0,1,'R');
$pdf->SetFont('Arial','',13);
//Vehicle Stuff
$pdf->Cell(12,15,'VRM: ',0,0);
$pdf->Cell(29,15,$vrm,0,0,'C');
$pdf->Cell(13,15,'Make: ',0,0);
$pdf->Cell(35,15,$make,0,0,'C');
$pdf->Cell(14,15,'Model: ',0,0);
$pdf->Cell(44,15,$model,0,0,'C');
$pdf->Cell(18,15,'Mileage: ',0,0);
$pdf->Cell(24,15,$mileage,0,1,'C');
//Work
$pdf->Cell(149,5,'Work Carried Out',1,0,'C');
$pdf->Cell(40,5,'Amount',1,0,'C');
$pdf->Cell(0,5,'',0,1);
$pdf->MultiCell(189,25,$work1,1,'C',false);
$pdf->MultiCell(40,25,$amount1,1,1);
$pdf->MultiCell(189,25,$work2,1,'C',false);
$pdf->MultiCell(40,25,$amount2,1,1);
$pdf->MultiCell(189,25,$work3,1,'C',false);
$pdf->Cell(40,25,$amount3,1,1);
//Other
$pdf->Cell(189,5,'Other Details',1,'C');
$pdf->MultiCell(189,25,$other,1,'C',false);
$pdf->Output();
?>
Yes. If you look at the docs for tcpdf, you'll see there are options for output, including one (S) that returns the PDF data directly as a string, rather than writing it to a file. You can pass this raw data directly into PHPMailer's addStringAttachment() method, like this:
$pdfdata = $pdf->Output('name.pdf', 'S');
$mail->addStringAttachment($pdfdata, 'name.pdf');
It will get its encoding and MIME type set automatically.
In other news, the tcpdf docs are hopeless to navigate.
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Does anyone know of a good method for editing PDFs in PHP? Preferably open-source/zero-license cost methods. :)
I am thinking along the lines of opening a PDF file, replacing text in the PDF and then writing out the modified version of the PDF?
On the front-end
If you are taking a 'fill in the blank' approach, you can precisely position text anywhere you want on the page. So it's relatively easy (if not a bit tedious) to add the missing text to the document. For example with Zend Framework:
<?php
require_once 'Zend/Pdf.php';
$pdf = Zend_Pdf::load('blank.pdf');
$page = $pdf->pages[0];
$font = Zend_Pdf_Font::fontWithName(Zend_Pdf_Font::FONT_HELVETICA);
$page->setFont($font, 12);
$page->drawText('Hello world!', 72, 720);
$pdf->save('zend.pdf');
If you're trying to replace inline content, such as a "[placeholder string]," it gets much more complicated. While it's technically possible to do, you're likely to mess up the layout of the page.
A PDF document is comprised of a set of primitive drawing operations: line here, image here, text chunk there, etc. It does not contain any information about the layout intent of those primitives.
There is a free and easy to use PDF class to create PDF documents. It's called FPDF. In combination with FPDI (http://www.setasign.de/products/pdf-php-solutions/fpdi) it is even possible to edit PDF documents.
The following code shows how to use FPDF and FPDI to fill an existing gift coupon with the user data.
require_once('fpdf.php');
require_once('fpdi.php');
$pdf = new FPDI();
$pdf->AddPage();
$pdf->setSourceFile('gift_coupon.pdf');
// import page 1
$tplIdx = $this->pdf->importPage(1);
//use the imported page and place it at point 0,0; calculate width and height
//automaticallay and ajust the page size to the size of the imported page
$this->pdf->useTemplate($tplIdx, 0, 0, 0, 0, true);
// now write some text above the imported page
$this->pdf->SetFont('Arial', '', '13');
$this->pdf->SetTextColor(0,0,0);
//set position in pdf document
$this->pdf->SetXY(20, 20);
//first parameter defines the line height
$this->pdf->Write(0, 'gift code');
//force the browser to download the output
$this->pdf->Output('gift_coupon_generated.pdf', 'D');
If you need really simple PDFs, then Zend or FPDF is fine. However I find them difficult and frustrating to work with. Also, because of the way the API works, there's no good way to separate content from presentation from business logic.
For that reason, I use dompdf, which automatically converts HTML and CSS to PDF documents. You can lay out a template just as you would for an HTML page and use standard HTML syntax. You can even include an external CSS file. The library isn't perfect and very complex markup or css sometimes gets mangled, but I haven't found anything else that works as well.
Don't know if this is an option, but it would work very similar to Zend's pdf library, but you don't need to load a bunch of extra code (the zend framework). It just extends FPDF.
http://www.setasign.de/products/pdf-php-solutions/fpdi/
Here you can basically do the same thing. Load the PDF, write over top of it, and then save to a new PDF. In FPDI you basically insert the PDF as an image so you can put whatever you want over it.
But again, this uses FPDF, so if you don't want to use that, then it won't work.
Zend Framework can load and edit existing PDF files. I think it supports revisions too.
I use it to create docs in a project, and it works great. Never edited one though.
Check out the doc here
The PDF/pdflib extension documentation in PHP is sparse (something that has been noted in bugs.php.net) - I reccommend you use the Zend library.
Tcpdf is also a good liabrary for generating pdf in php
http://www.tcpdf.org/
We use pdflib to create PDF files from our rails apps. It has bindings for PHP, and a ton of other languages.
We use the commmercial version, but they also have a free/open source version which has some limitations.
Unfortunately, this only allows creation of PDF's.
If you want to open and 'edit' existing files, pdflib do provide a product which does this this, but costs a LOT
<?php
//getting new instance
$pdfFile = new_pdf();
PDF_open_file($pdfFile, " ");
//document info
pdf_set_info($pdfFile, "Auther", "Ahmed Elbshry");
pdf_set_info($pdfFile, "Creator", "Ahmed Elbshry");
pdf_set_info($pdfFile, "Title", "PDFlib");
pdf_set_info($pdfFile, "Subject", "Using PDFlib");
//starting our page and define the width and highet of the document
pdf_begin_page($pdfFile, 595, 842);
//check if Arial font is found, or exit
if($font = PDF_findfont($pdfFile, "Arial", "winansi", 1)) {
PDF_setfont($pdfFile, $font, 12);
} else {
echo ("Font Not Found!");
PDF_end_page($pdfFile);
PDF_close($pdfFile);
PDF_delete($pdfFile);
exit();
}
//start writing from the point 50,780
PDF_show_xy($pdfFile, "This Text In Arial Font", 50, 780);
PDF_end_page($pdfFile);
PDF_close($pdfFile);
//store the pdf document in $pdf
$pdf = PDF_get_buffer($pdfFile);
//get the len to tell the browser about it
$pdflen = strlen($pdfFile);
//telling the browser about the pdf document
header("Content-type: application/pdf");
header("Content-length: $pdflen");
header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=phpMade.pdf");
//output the document
print($pdf);
//delete the object
PDF_delete($pdfFile);
?>
I need to fill in a PDF, in the fly, using PHP - have no idea where to start.
I'm currently doing quizzes on line using PHP - once a series of quizzes are passed the client wants to let the user download a 'certificate of completion'
The PDF of the certificate has blank lines for the users name and the area of study.
My thought is - add 2 form elements to the PDF, and have PHP pill them in when I pull of the certificate.
BUT HOW?
Is there a different, better way?
Things I need to be 'cautious' of - installing third party stuff is not reliable, UNLESS I can just drop a lib in the the site root. I can't guarantee the hosting provider will let me change a PHP config.
Any help is appreciated - the more specific, the better.
Sorry I have no code at the moment - other than how I'm currently displaying the PDF -
// show cert
echo '<iframe src="1_cert.pdf" width="1000" height="700">';
Thanks.
OK - using TCPDF - as suggested - I've installed, and example pages work...
I've placed a file in the example folder.... I've included a call to import...
require_once('../tcpdf_import.php');
// create new PDF document
$pdf = new TCPDF_IMPORT('1_cert.pdf');
...other boiler plate copied form other examples...
$pdf->SetDisplayMode('fullpage', 'SinglePage', 'UseNone');
// set font
$pdf->SetFont('times', 'B', 20);
$pdf->setPage(1, true);
$pdf->SetY(50);
$pdf->Cell(0, 0, 'test text', 1, 1, 'C');
$pdf->lastPage();
The error I'm getting "TCPDF ERROR: Wrong page number on setPage() function: 1"
Ok, if you're not showing code, then neither will I. ;)
I would recommend doing it with TCPDF.
Import the PDF with TCPDF_Import
In a PDF document, you can navigate to any x/y position, (NB: 0/0 is bottom left). Therefore, simply set your “cursor” to the position to each field, and insert a text with either the Cell or the writeHTMLCell method.
Save the PDF document.
Display it to the user.
Voilà.
By the way, both FPDI and TCPDF are common PHP libraries, so you can just put them somewhere in your base folder, no additional tools should be required on a common web server.
I have been looking and testing this for a couple days now and was wondering if anyone could point me in a different direction. I have a very long job application HTML form (jobapp.html) and a matching PDF (jobpdf.pdf) that have the same field names for all entries in both the HTML form and the PDF. I need to take the user data that is entered in the form and convert it to a PDF. This is what I have gathered so far but don't know if I am on track:
Is pdftk the only viable 3rd party app to accomplish this?
Using pdftk would i take the $_POST data collected for the user and generate a .fdf(user.fdf) then flatten the .fdf on the .pdf(job.pdf). So irreguarless of where the fields are located on each document the information on the fdf would populate the pdf by field names?
I have been trying
http://koivi.com/fill-pdf-form-fields/tutorial.php
I have also looked at "Submit HTML form to PDF"
I have used fpdf several times to create php-based pdf documents. An example following:
require('fpdf.php');
$pdf = new FPDF();
$pdf->AddFont('georgia', '', 'georgia.php');
$pdf->AddFont('georgia', 'B', 'georgiab.php');
$pdf->AddFont('georgia', 'I', 'georgiai.php');
# Add UTF-8 support (only add a Unicode font)
$pdf->AddFont('freesans', '', 'freesans.php', true);
$pdf->SetFont('freesans', '', 12);
$pdf->SetTitle('My title');
$pdf->SetAuthor('My author');
$pdf->SetDisplayMode('fullpage', 'single');
$pdf->SetLeftMargin(20);
$pdf->SetRightMargin(20);
$pdf->AddPage();
$pdf->Cell(40,10,'Hello World!');
$pdf->Output();
You can learn very fast with these tutorials from the website itself.
EDIT: Example to save form data: (yes, is very easy...)
require('fpdf.php');
$pdf = new FPDF();
$pdf->AddPage();
foreach ($_POST as $key =>$data)
{
$pdf->Write(5, "$key: $data"); //write
$pdf->Ln(10); // new line
}
$pdf->Output($path_to_file . 'file.txt','F'); // save to file
Look at these pages created with fpdf, really!
http://www.fpdf.org/
That would be the library to do it. I used it here to add images to a form and submit it to create a PDF with those images: http://productionlocations.com/locations
The actual code to do it is pretty complex.
I have found PrinceXML very easy to use. It takes your HTML/XML, applies CSS, and converts it into a PDF. The PHP extensions work very well. Unfortunately, it's not free.
One way you can consider is using an online API that converts any HTML to PDF. You can send them a generated HTML (easier to produce) that will contains your user's submitted data, and receive back a high fidelity PDF.
There are quite a few services available on the market. I like to mention PDFShift because it offers a package in PHP that simplifies the work for you.
Once you've installed it (using Composer, or downloaded it directly, depending on your choices) you can quickly convert an HTML document like this:
require_once('vendor/autoload.php');
use \PDFShift\PDFShift;
PDFShift::setApiKey('{your api key}');
PDFShift::convertTo('https://link/to/your/html', null, 'invoice.pdf');
And that's it. There are quite a few features you can implement (accessing secured documents, adding a watermark, and more).
Hope that helps!
I want to modify a PDF document with PHP. I found the libs FPDF and FPDI which allows to create and modify PDF files. Here is my very simple code:
<?php
require_once('include/fpdf.php');
require_once('include/fpdi.php');
// initiate FPDI
$pdf = new FPDI();
// add a page
$pdf->AddPage();
// set the sourcefile
$pdf->setSourceFile('input.pdf');
// import page 1
$page1 = $pdf->importPage(1);
// insert the page
$pdf->useTemplate($page1);
// now write some text above the imported page
$pdf->AddFont('calibri');
$pdf->SetFont('calibri','',11);
$pdf->Write(0, "This is just a simple text");
header("Content-Type: application/pdf");
$pdf->Output();
That works very well, but I see that the inserted text adds something like a reference to the system font instead of the already embedded font. How can I simply reuse the embedded font?
If that is not possible with that libs feel free to point me to a third free lib.
I know that I can just use characters which are already used, but this is no problem in my special case. I have checked that all possible characters are used in the right case sensitivity.
I bet your embedded font from the imported PDF page is not called calibri. (Lower-case only spelling of fontnames in PDFs is very rare.)
And I also bet, that the PDF will not have Calibri embedded as a full set. It's rather likely that it is a subset only. And as a subset, the fontname will be composed of a random 6 letter uppercase prefix + the original font name, like this:
AXBTZV+Calibri
You have to find that exact name and try with this. (However, I'm not sure if how your PHP library works, if it can do that at all, and if it would handle the modification of the PDF text writing code in the correct way. Gimme the PDF and I most likely can do it in a Text Editor, though...)
Reusing fonts in PDFs is mostly not possible since only the characters that are used in the PDF are stored. So if you never used an uppercase W in your PDF template and want to add text with one, then it cannot be displayed.
This does not answer your question but rather tells you not to try it at all.
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Does anyone know of a good method for editing PDFs in PHP? Preferably open-source/zero-license cost methods. :)
I am thinking along the lines of opening a PDF file, replacing text in the PDF and then writing out the modified version of the PDF?
On the front-end
If you are taking a 'fill in the blank' approach, you can precisely position text anywhere you want on the page. So it's relatively easy (if not a bit tedious) to add the missing text to the document. For example with Zend Framework:
<?php
require_once 'Zend/Pdf.php';
$pdf = Zend_Pdf::load('blank.pdf');
$page = $pdf->pages[0];
$font = Zend_Pdf_Font::fontWithName(Zend_Pdf_Font::FONT_HELVETICA);
$page->setFont($font, 12);
$page->drawText('Hello world!', 72, 720);
$pdf->save('zend.pdf');
If you're trying to replace inline content, such as a "[placeholder string]," it gets much more complicated. While it's technically possible to do, you're likely to mess up the layout of the page.
A PDF document is comprised of a set of primitive drawing operations: line here, image here, text chunk there, etc. It does not contain any information about the layout intent of those primitives.
There is a free and easy to use PDF class to create PDF documents. It's called FPDF. In combination with FPDI (http://www.setasign.de/products/pdf-php-solutions/fpdi) it is even possible to edit PDF documents.
The following code shows how to use FPDF and FPDI to fill an existing gift coupon with the user data.
require_once('fpdf.php');
require_once('fpdi.php');
$pdf = new FPDI();
$pdf->AddPage();
$pdf->setSourceFile('gift_coupon.pdf');
// import page 1
$tplIdx = $this->pdf->importPage(1);
//use the imported page and place it at point 0,0; calculate width and height
//automaticallay and ajust the page size to the size of the imported page
$this->pdf->useTemplate($tplIdx, 0, 0, 0, 0, true);
// now write some text above the imported page
$this->pdf->SetFont('Arial', '', '13');
$this->pdf->SetTextColor(0,0,0);
//set position in pdf document
$this->pdf->SetXY(20, 20);
//first parameter defines the line height
$this->pdf->Write(0, 'gift code');
//force the browser to download the output
$this->pdf->Output('gift_coupon_generated.pdf', 'D');
If you need really simple PDFs, then Zend or FPDF is fine. However I find them difficult and frustrating to work with. Also, because of the way the API works, there's no good way to separate content from presentation from business logic.
For that reason, I use dompdf, which automatically converts HTML and CSS to PDF documents. You can lay out a template just as you would for an HTML page and use standard HTML syntax. You can even include an external CSS file. The library isn't perfect and very complex markup or css sometimes gets mangled, but I haven't found anything else that works as well.
Don't know if this is an option, but it would work very similar to Zend's pdf library, but you don't need to load a bunch of extra code (the zend framework). It just extends FPDF.
http://www.setasign.de/products/pdf-php-solutions/fpdi/
Here you can basically do the same thing. Load the PDF, write over top of it, and then save to a new PDF. In FPDI you basically insert the PDF as an image so you can put whatever you want over it.
But again, this uses FPDF, so if you don't want to use that, then it won't work.
Zend Framework can load and edit existing PDF files. I think it supports revisions too.
I use it to create docs in a project, and it works great. Never edited one though.
Check out the doc here
The PDF/pdflib extension documentation in PHP is sparse (something that has been noted in bugs.php.net) - I reccommend you use the Zend library.
Tcpdf is also a good liabrary for generating pdf in php
http://www.tcpdf.org/
We use pdflib to create PDF files from our rails apps. It has bindings for PHP, and a ton of other languages.
We use the commmercial version, but they also have a free/open source version which has some limitations.
Unfortunately, this only allows creation of PDF's.
If you want to open and 'edit' existing files, pdflib do provide a product which does this this, but costs a LOT
<?php
//getting new instance
$pdfFile = new_pdf();
PDF_open_file($pdfFile, " ");
//document info
pdf_set_info($pdfFile, "Auther", "Ahmed Elbshry");
pdf_set_info($pdfFile, "Creator", "Ahmed Elbshry");
pdf_set_info($pdfFile, "Title", "PDFlib");
pdf_set_info($pdfFile, "Subject", "Using PDFlib");
//starting our page and define the width and highet of the document
pdf_begin_page($pdfFile, 595, 842);
//check if Arial font is found, or exit
if($font = PDF_findfont($pdfFile, "Arial", "winansi", 1)) {
PDF_setfont($pdfFile, $font, 12);
} else {
echo ("Font Not Found!");
PDF_end_page($pdfFile);
PDF_close($pdfFile);
PDF_delete($pdfFile);
exit();
}
//start writing from the point 50,780
PDF_show_xy($pdfFile, "This Text In Arial Font", 50, 780);
PDF_end_page($pdfFile);
PDF_close($pdfFile);
//store the pdf document in $pdf
$pdf = PDF_get_buffer($pdfFile);
//get the len to tell the browser about it
$pdflen = strlen($pdfFile);
//telling the browser about the pdf document
header("Content-type: application/pdf");
header("Content-length: $pdflen");
header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=phpMade.pdf");
//output the document
print($pdf);
//delete the object
PDF_delete($pdfFile);
?>