Generating custom PDF server or client side using Angular4 and PHP - php

Question

I am building an Angular 4 app with PHP API. Within the app users are able generate some sort of "magazine". This allows them to sort pages, edit content and add images but not in a WYSIWYG way, rather in a step by step "this option I selected is what I want" way.
So I end up with a lot of data stored in a MySQL database kind of "describing" how the final PDF should look like.
The problem is I have absolutely no idea how to generate a PDF. I know there are things like pdfmake or jsPDF as client side solutions or tcpdf (which seems to be in version transition for ever?!) as server side solution. But all of these are limited.
I think the best solution would be to generate some LaTeX code and generating some PDF out of it, due to the ability to use the variety of LaTeX commands instead of the limited commands for jsPDF or pdfmake.
Is there any kind of standard or best way to manage compiling LaTeX code using angular?
Which way to go? Server side or client side? The LaTeX and PDFs which are going to be created contain lots of images, and about 100-200 pages ...

Answer 1

For everyone else searching
CLSI seems to be a way of managing it. There is an still being maintained open source api to compile LaTeX files: CLSI ShareLaTeX
Thanks to mike42
Another very interesting example of compiling LaTeX with PHP ... which actually is the way to go in my case ... is to generate a .tex file which is a valid LaTeX file and a valid PHP file at once so the code ends up something like this:
% This file is a valid PHP file and also a valid LaTeX file
% When processed with LaTeX, it will generate a blank template
% Loading with PHP will fill it with details
\documentclass{article}
% Required for proper escaping
\usepackage{textcomp} % Symbols
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} % Input format
% Because Unicode etc.
\usepackage{fontspec} % For loading fonts
\setmainfont{Liberation Serif} % Has a lot more symbols than Computer Modern
% Make placeholders visible
\newcommand{\placeholder}[1]{\textbf{$<$ #1 $>$}}
% Defaults for each variable
\newcommand{\test}{\placeholder{Data here}}
% Fill in
% <?php echo "\n" . "\\renewcommand{\\test}{" . LatexTemplate::escape($data['test']) . "}\n"; ?>
\begin{document}
\section{Data From PHP}
\test{}
\end{document}
If PHP safe mode is disabled and the server has xelatex / pdflatex installed execute the command on a file directly ...
First the filled-in LaTeX code needs to be stored in a temporary file by doing something like this:
/**
* Generate a PDF file using xelatex and pass it to the user
*/
public static function download($data, $template_file, $outp_file) {
// Pre-flight checks
if(!file_exists($template_file)) {
throw new Exception("Could not open template");
}
if(($f = tempnam(sys_get_temp_dir(), 'tex-')) === false) {
throw new Exception("Failed to create temporary file");
}
$tex_f = $f . ".tex";
$aux_f = $f . ".aux";
$log_f = $f . ".log";
$pdf_f = $f . ".pdf";
// Perform substitution of variables
ob_start();
include($template_file);
file_put_contents($tex_f, ob_get_clean());
}
After that the engine of choice should be executed to generate the output files:
// Run xelatex (Used because of native unicode and TTF font support)
$cmd = sprintf("xelatex -interaction nonstopmode -halt-on-error %s",
escapeshellarg($tex_f));
chdir(sys_get_temp_dir());
exec($cmd, $foo, $ret);
// No need for these files anymore
#unlink($tex_f);
#unlink($aux_f);
#unlink($log_f);
// Test here
if(!file_exists($pdf_f)) {
#unlink($f);
throw new Exception("Output was not generated and latex returned: $ret.");
}