I studied wkhtmltopdf, tcpdf mechanism to generate pdf files. wkhtmltopdf where you directly pass a .html file and it gives you the pdf where in tcpdf you need to code entire pdf.
my case is I'm having a pdf form template Which I've converted into html so user can fill that form and after i fill that template with user entered values then I'll give an option to user to download the html (user filled) file as PDF document, so template will have user entered data next to that labels.
so first
PDF template >> convert to .HTML page >> process with php echoing >> convert it back with user input to a PDF file.
I'm confused here which approach I should use.
Install wkhtmltopdf on server and use it to pass .html page
problem: Everytime I need to save .html page on server and pass again it to wkhtmltopdf.
using TCPDF I need to write lots of code to create pdf exactly same as template PDF docs I'm having
and then using php echoing those user enterted values.
Which approach should i use If I'm expecting 1000+ users will be saving page as pdf at same time, approach which will be more easier and scalable in future.
First of all - I think you should go with the HTML form to PDF approach, so that's either wkhtmltopdf or a tool that already does this for you like PDFmyFORM.
In case you're expecting to go to 1000 saves concurrently then you definitely want to roll your own solution instead of going with an external service though.
There are patches in the wkhtmltopdf issue list that suggest caching (see this one) and you may also want to think about whether all these forms have to be generated as PDF again. You could use APC cache to somehow cache PDFs based on the same values being filled in. That could save you a bunch of time.
Other solutions you may want to look into are for example PhantomJS, which is a headless webkit browser too, but then based on JS - so that may reduce your server load alltogether...
Related
is there any possible way to not lose any content, when inserting an image into a filled pdf, i am using the fpdm.php script from here and works prettty good i might add. the pdfs i am using i pass them trough pdftk, as in pdftk.exe insert.pdf output output.pdf so they can be filled via php with out throwing errors
so my problem is this, i have a pdf template, which i use to fill it with an array passed from php, and output it to browser or server, and works ok, but when i try to insert an image into it, it inserts it, but loses all filled data, i need to retain that data. i cant use pdftk because im on a godaddy shared hosting plan, also setasign scripts works i know, but i am trying to find a way without buying anything yet.
i found this stamper which stamps ok but loses pdf data, all boxes get blanked, and also this one that places the image and loses all data too. setasign is doing some magic stuff right there
All mentioned scripts are using FPDI in the background which simply doesn't modifes the original document but will allow you to recreate a completely new PDF document by importing another one page by page into reuseable structures (XObjects). Because form fields or other dynamic content like links or any other annotation type are not part of a pages content stream they will get lost.
The mentioned "magic" of the SetaPDF products is, that they modify the original document. Because of this all content will retain.
I generate a PDF file from PHP with TCPDF classes. I would like to count the number of copies, because the original PDF file have to print once and the others have a header like second copy, third copy.
Is there any solution for this, or how can I check it after the user download the PDF?
You can't detect what the user is doing in the browser with PHP. You detect user interaction with the browser with JavaScript but I am fairly certain you cannot detect how many copies they are printing for security purposes.
Since the PDF is generated with PHP you can have a form saying how many copies they want and then generate one large PDF with all the copies and heading pages. They print this document once and get all the copies they need.
I am trying to generate a pdf from a web page which has pictures and swf files.
Final pdf should have pictures (swf should be converted into image, last frame is sufficient).
I am able to generate pdf when only images are there but i am stuck in creating pdf when the web page has swf files.
I've used wkhtmltopdf before to render pdfs programatically from web sites. I'm not sure if it'll cope with swf but it may do since it uses a version of webkit compiled in to qt.
You might be able to use wkhtmltopdf --enable-plugins. But according to this bugreport it might not work http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/issues/detail?id=48 with the flash plugin (Java however does!).
Another option is running a browser in headless mode, or on a virtual X. Firefox3 works supposedly if you use the extension "CommandLinePrint".
Xvfb :2 -screen 0 1600x1200x24 &
firefox --display=localhost:2.0 -print http://flashgames.com -printmode pdf -printfile '/tmp/test.pdf'
Infos stolen from http://spielwiese.la-evento.com/xelasblog/archives/31-Headless-Firefox-als-HTML-to-PDF.html (in German however).
But there are a few more guides like this ("headless browser, HTML to PDF"). I would totally link to one of the dupes here on Stackoverflow. But I'm too lazy to search right now.
Since you are wanting to output the target page as a PDF I would look at using .rdlc (Report Definition Language Client). It is part of the Microsoft.Reporting namespace and is designed to work with asp.net. It is freely usable and redistributable.
In many cases the layout of a web page is not "printer friendly". By using this technique you can re-arrange the layout and spacing of the PDF output to a presentation that is more printer friendly.
This will not "directly" convert your page to a PDF, but rather allow you to adapt your page layout and data to a dataset and use that to build a report. That report can then be output programmatically at runtime using the reportviewer control. If this approach interests you, let me know and I will be glad to provide more help getting you through setting it up and using.
First of all my apologies to all the people who think this question is a repeated one or they find a similar question to this.
I am working on a project in which I have an online form and some PDFs stored on the server.
Functionality
On the submit action I have to get the data from the form, fill it to the copy of PDF and finally download it.
Approach
I followed these steps to achieve this functionality:
Converted the pdfs to html with this http://www.pdfdownload.org/free-pdf-to-html.aspx online tool.
Embedded the html with form variables and regenerated the PDFs with this library / dompdf library.
Problem
The approach is a brute force one as the html generated are far away from the real ones. So lot of effort is wasted in adjusting the html.
The process is so slow and not reliable as most of the time I get memory error or some other issues.
I need to to automate this process. What I have found through searching is I should create an FDF file that contains my variable and pass it to the PDF using some library and then download it.
I am able to create the FDF file but missing any library in PHP (I found one in JAVA) that I can use to create the PDF and download it. One library that I found is pdf tool kit but that is a command line tool and I am not able to use it on the server at run time and download the PDF file.
Anybody having done this before please help.
(Sorry for this long post)
Thanks,
Madhup
Check out FPDI. It allows you to load some existing PDF, draw on it programatically, and output a new PDF. Which, if I read your question right, is what you're trying to do.
There's some example code here.
I have spent a lot of time trying to get dompdf (http://www.digitaljunkies.ca/dompdf/) to work but I keep running into problems. I am trying to generate a PDF from a PHP script which generates a fairly complex, filled out web form. The script accepts a $_GET parameter (record number) and fills out the form accordingly with data from the database. I have no problem getting this data into the script as a string or any type of value really. What I am wondering is what the best approach would be for converting this type of data to a PDF?
The flow is as follows: user completes form and is taken to confirmation page which I would like to add a "Save as PDF" button. At this point one of two things could happen, the page that is currently being displayed in the browser could be spun directly to a pdf or a call to itself (scriptname.php?id=xyz) could be made using something like PHP's http_get() function and store the HTML as a string. From there I am having issues with preparing an accurate representation as a PDF.
I have heard some talk about fpdf but their examples don't really lead me to believe you can use dynamic data as the source, but please correct me if I am wrong about this.
Any input would be appreciated.
-- Nicholas
Well, I didn't know dompdf. Strange that it uses either a commercial library (PDFlib) or an outdated (?) one (CPDF, not updated for 3 years). But well, as long as it works (concept is interesting).
I don't understand what you mean by "use dynamic data as the source" (or rather, I see not point in generating static PDF!), but FPDF is used to generate various dynamic documents, like invoices in e-commerce products. I saw people using forks (like TCPDF) to handle Unicode data, though.
You can't transform an HTML page to PDF with FPDF, but you have a quite precise control of layout, using concept of cells with data.
You can see such kind of code there: http://svn.prestashop.com/trunk/classes/PDF.php
In the past when faced with this issue, I have used FPDF for the placement of data on a PDF template. Then, by setting the appropriate HTTP header, force the browser to pop open the Download / Save As box for the user to save said PDF.
In a class that extends FPDF/FPDI appropriately, use something like the following to generate a PDF from a template PDF you've already created (http://www.setasign.de/products/pdf-php-solutions/fpdi/):
$this->setSourceFile('pdf_template.pdf');
$template_page = $this->importPage(1, '/MediaBox');
$this->useTemplate($template_page, 0, 0);
Then, have FPDF generate the PDF for output using:
$this->Output();
You can also extend FPDF to accept (limited) HTML for formatting using the script found here: http://www.fpdf.org/en/script/script41.php