I am making an app that creates an invoice.
It is created in HTML and PHP using different data from a database.
I need to create a function that converts the page into a PDF and send it to a client.
I can not store it on server as it would mean to create a few hundred everyday. I need something like "http://FreeHTMLtoPDF.com/?convert=".$strBillURL; but it's not working any more.
Many thanks if you can help me!
I prefer to generate PDF files using some library that converts HTML/CSS to PDF. One of the libraries that provides this and is very easy to use is mPDF:
https://github.com/mpdf/mpdf
I have no information regarding what type of PDFs you generate, but in my projects I tend to generate them on the fly from the data in the database and do not store them at all.
There are also other options available for converting HTML to PDF, like wkhtmltopdf, but they might require additional knowledge in set up: https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltopdf
Related
I am working with a tool which lets user upload a .csv file.
That csv file contains an address column. I have to use the address from each row in another HTML template. That HTML template is like this
. After creating that template I then need to convert it into a PDF, store the PDF on a file server and give the user a link to the PDF.
I've finished the first two steps - csv upload and created complete template with address, but I'm stuck on how I can convert a template into a PDF.
I have looked into a few php-pdf libraries like fpdf mpdf. I'm facing a problem in creating pdf with html template.
A link to a library wich convert HTML to PDF and works pretty well.
First the link to the library
HTML2PDF
Then some code* to create your PDF using your own generated HTML, where $content is your HTML string.
$html2pdf = new HTML2PDF('P','A4','fr');
$html2pdf->WriteHTML($content);
$html2pdf->Output('exemple.pdf');
*Code taken from the "example page" of the site.
I have used tcpdf in many cases, https://tcpdf.org/
Works well with tables, I have made receipts and accounting related stuff with it. Handle UTF-8 without problems, why it's my way to go.
Only downside is that code is bit long and complicated and it doesn't keep tables as tables in pdf and turns them to divs, so paddings and other styles might be bit trickier to do.
One way is to use webkit based HTML to PDF converter.
Pros are that it is easy to customize and style and to see in the browser how it will look and then you can be sure that it will look as same in PDF as well. You could use CSS and JavaScript as well to style and modify.
Cons are that it is hard to install it on the production server sometimes. But there are web services and APIs that get you covered.
For example one service is https://pdfapi.io. It is free to use. Only when your amounts get bigger, then it will charge like a cup of coffee.
Hope that helps.
Can we really generate pdf files using php thro' some APIs without manually creating HTML. Beacuse I have got to create Invoices for some 50 groups and each having different HTML, so it would be a pain to create HTML for each of them and then create PDF using library from this HTML. Is there any other way?
yes of course, start learning from
http://www.fpdf.org/ or
https://tcpdf.org/
It will definitely helps you
I have a PDF form and i want to import this PDF Form in PHP and then populate all fields from database then create new PDF.
is that possible?
If yes then please guide me how can i inert data in already make PDF forms.
Here is the PDF form file which i want to Import.
Download PDF
If you do take into account your working time etc. you might actually consider commercial server-side form filling tool, such as FDFMerge by Appligent (for simple filling, the Lite version would be sufficient). In this case, you won't need to noodle around the PDF, trying to interpret it, and attempting to write something back.
In this scenario, you would export an FDF from the database, which is rather easy to accomplish, as FDF is a simple text file. How it has to look can be found with ease as well, by taking the form, filling it out, and exporting the data as FDF. And then, the rest is "filling out the blanks".
For using libraries to do server-side filling, links have already been provided. Just a note: make sure that you will get a good and functional PDF, by relying on well-reputated libraries.
I am creating a small application which manipulates PDF file as follows
A customer creates a CSV to a given specification that contains the
name,address, country, ink type, station to use. This CSV could also
include customized tokens which replace tokens that are written
within their PDF Document.
A customer creates a PDF document it could be a standard document
that's exactly the same that gets sent to everyone in their CSV file,
or it could contain special tokens which are replace with specific
contacts details within the CSV.
I've briefly looked at http://us.php.net/pdf and FPDF, but I was wondering what specific technique I'd use to achieve this.
I was thinking I'd insert an address tokens string where I want the address to go, and then use some function to update those tokens in the PDF document.
Can anyone point me in the right direction? I have php experience, but not with editing / generating pdf documents from php.
You can use MPDF lib to generate PDF. In it you just need to pass your HTML content.
From half the PHP devs I talk to they recommend this:
http://www.setasign.de/products/pdf-php-solutions/setapdf-linkreplacer/
For your problem - I believe you need to buy it but there is an eval copy for your devving needs.
HTHs - Thanks,
//P
I am using Tcpdf library to generate pdf.
please check url for example. http://www.tcpdf.org/examples.php
If you kept all the contact information on a single page you could use poppler-utils https://packages.debian.org/sid/poppler-utils to pdfmerge the page of contact info with the bulk of the PDF. Use tcpdf library to create the one page with contact info.
I am using PHP 5.0 pdf library to convert files dynamically into PDF.
I am using this reference from the official PHP website using PDF_new(), creating its object and using PDF_set_info and PDF_get_buffer functions.
This works fine, but when I want to create PDF pages and writing the content inside of it, there is no reference given anywhere on how to convert an already existing page to PDF. Say a page in my folder bill.php with CSS too needs to be converted to PDF on the fly.
Well converting HTML to PDF is not that easy, there are several libraries out there that might fit your needs. But none has full html/css capabilities, especially not css3.
FPDF
http://www.fpdf.org
TCPDF
http://www.tcpdf.org
DOMPDF
http://code.google.com/p/dompdf/ (this class allows you to easily convert simple layouted websites to pdf. i used this class quite often with almost no problems. sadly this library does not support converting of forms to usable input fields.)
WKHTMLTOPDF
http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/ (actually a linux package but php wrappers are existing. this gives almost full html capabilities and awesome results)
html2PDF is a nice library to use. Make sure you change the default language to English though. I've used it many times to create dynamic invoices with tables and divs. Works really well.
Refer some of the articles, which may help to improve your knowledge as well as clear some of doubt of you.
Getting started
Convert HTML To PDF in PHP The Easy Way
How to Generate a PDF With PHP
Convert HTML to PDF
This HTML to PDF SDK may also help you.
Hope, it will help you.