Force download html to pdf using php - php

I try to make force download html-file to pdf and use the code below
<?php
header('Content-disposition: attachment; filename=\''. basename($file) .'\'.pdf');
header("Content-type: application/pdf");
echo file_get_contents($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/index-1.html');
?>
I get some file with .pdf extention but when I try to open it, i get an error `not PDF or corrupted'. What's wrong and how to make it work?

Telling the browser that some data is a PDF will not magically transform the data into a PDF.
You'll need to do that yourself, e.g. using the PHP PDF library or Prince.

You have to create a properly PDF file. You can do this using some PHP classes like HTML2PDF or wkhtmltopdf.

You can't just put html in a pet file and expect it to work you need to use something like dompdf to convert html to a pdf file: https://code.google.com/p/dompdf/
For even better results and support for floats I would use the following library. I got extremely good results with it. The reason why this one is working so well is because they use the WebKit browser rendering engine to render the html before converting it to pdf giving you almost 1 on 1 results when comparing it to the browser.
https://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/

Related

Generate PDF from HTML/CSS/PHP in Symfony 1.4

I am working on a Symfony 1.4 project. I need to make a PDF download link for a (yet to be) generated voucher and I have to say, I am a bit confused. I already have the HTML/CSS for the voucher, I created the download button in the right view, but I don't know where to go from there.
Use Mpdf to create the pdf file
http://www.mpdf1.com/
+1 with wkhtmltopdf
I'd even recommand the snappy library.
If you use composer, you can even get the wkhtmltopdf binaries automatically
Having used wkhtmltopdf for a while I've moved off it as 1) it has some serious bugs and 2) ongoing development has slowed down. I moved over to PhantomJS which is proving to be much better in terms of functionality and effectiveness.
Once you've got something like wkhtmltopdf or PhantomJS on your machine you need to generate the HTML page and pass that along to it. I'll give you an example assuming you use PhantomJS.
Initially set what every request parameters you need to for the template.
$this->getRequest->setParamater([some parameter],[some value]);
Then call the function getPresentation() to generate the HTML from a template. This will return the resulting HTML for a specific module and action.
$html = sfContext::getInstance()->getController()->getPresentation([module],[action]);
You'll need to replace the relative CSS paths with a absolute CSS path in the HTML file. For example by running preg_replace.
$html_replaced = preg_replace('/"\/css/','"'.sfConfig('sf_web_dir').'/css',$html);
Now write the HTML page to file and convert to a PDF.
$fp = fopen('export.html','w+');
fwrite($fp,$html_replaced);
fclose($fp)
exec('/path/to/phantomjs/bin/phantomjs /path/to/phantomjs/examples/rasterize.js /path/to/export.html /path/to/export.pdf "A3");
Now send the PDF to the user:
$this->getResponse()->clearHttpHeaders();
$this->getResponse()->setHttpHeader('Content-Description','File Transfer');
$this->getResponse()->setHttpHeader('Cache-Control','public, must-revalidate, max-age=0');
$this->getResponse()->setHttpHeader('Pragma: public',true);
$this->getResponse()->setHttpHeader('Content-Transfer-Encoding','binary');
$this->getResponse()->setHttpHeader('Content-length',filesize('/path/to/export.pdf'));
$this->getResponse()->setContentType('application/pdf');
$this->getResponse()->setHttpHeader('Content-Disposition','attachment; filename=export.pdf');
$this->getResponse()->setContent(readfile('/path/to/export.pdf'));
$this->getResponse()->sendContent();
You do need to set the headers otherwise the browser does odd things. The filename for the generated HTML file and export should be unique to avoid the situation of two people generating PDF vouchers at the same time clashing. You can use something like sha1(time()) to add a randomised hash to a standard name e.g. 'export_'.sha1(time());
Use wkhtmltopdf, if possible. It is by far the best html2pdf converter a php coder can use.
And then do something like this (not tested, but should be pretty close):
public function executeGeneratePdf(sfWebRequest $request)
{
$this->getContext()->getResponse()->clearHttpHeaders();
$html = '*your html content*';
$pdf = new WKPDF();
$pdf->set_html($html);
$pdf->render();
$pdf->output(WKPDF::$PDF_EMBEDDED, 'whatever_name.pdf');
throw new sfStopException();
}

convert php file to pdf using mpdf

I can convert html page to pdf and send it via email with out any problem, but I am facing trouble with converting php file to pdf.
is it possible to convert php file to pdf using mpdf or do I need to use some other php class for this?
Thanks!
The option seems to be like, first convert the output of the php file to html file, save it and pass that file to mpdf.
Thought my solution may seem other way round but it worked well for me.
Or otherwise this Link
<?php
$file = '/home/user/Desktop/myfile.html';
$result = file_get_contents("url/of/ur/page");
echo $result; //view source now
file_put_contents($file, $result);
?>
now u can pass this file to mpdf. Realie sorie bt i havnt used mpdf till date. May be this solution works for you.
Also, other option is curl.

How to display pdf in browser

I am done with generating PDF file using FPDF in php. But the problem is how to open this pdf without the Save As option? I want to display the pdf document in the browser.
http://www.fpdf.org/en/doc/output.htm
Syntax: Output([string name] , string dest) , use I as Destination and fdpf will try to show it in the browser, if browser plugings and so on enable it
You cannot force this display, as it is up to the user to choose to display the PDF inline or systematically save them. I prefer the second option...
Now, there is a JavaScript / HTML 5 project (experimental!) to display PDF without plugin, so perhaps you can try that.
Even when using fpdf passing the output to the browser, I believe its still up to the user if they open or save it.
A solution would be to use some kind of PDF viewer, for example http://view.samurajdata.se/
Try this $pdf->Output('I', 'filename.pdf')
See the reference http://www.fpdf.org/en/doc/output.htm
Set header's content-type to 'application/pdf'. Then, most browsers will try to open it and show in-browser (or at least ask user to save or open file)
Your browser must have pdf plugin installed. If you havent done so install latest version of Acrobat Reader. If you are using fpdf, output the string instead of forcing download
For details
http://www.fpdf.org/en/doc/output.htm
Try echoing the PDF instead to using header function. The header function will force the browser to download. The echo 'might' show the pdf.

Problem with php exported xls file in Open Office

I am using PHP to export html table layout into excel format (.xls), well the html format opens up fine in Excel but distorted in OpenOffice..
do i have to add any special config to make html format work in OpenOffice?
Any suggesion would be helpful..
I use the below code
header("Content-Type: application/ms-excel");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment;filename=invoice.xls");
It's my practice to create HTML tables and save them as files with names like something.xls
Then both Excel and OpenOffice will open them as spreadsheets.
I don't use PHP, I use Perl, but no Content headers are involved.

how can we get the pdf file by using submit button

i want to make a pdf file with the help of php code if suppose i make a register form after click the submit button that form information must come to pdf file. is there any way to do. i got a one link but that PDF is not working properly
i have been searching but still i can't get the demo.
you guys can any one help me.
thanks
Try FPDF library. I am posting part of code I used for generating pdf dynamically in php.
require_once('fpdf/fpdf.php');
$frontpdf = new FPDF('P', 'mm', 'A4');
$frontpdf->AddPage();
$frontpdf->SetFont('Arial','',12);
$frontpdf->Cell(210, 230.19, $frontpdf->Image('./images/cover.jpg', 0, 0, 205, 230.19));
$frontpdf->Ln(218);
$frontpdf->Cell(110,6,$fname.' '.$lname,0);
$frontpdf->Ln();
$frontpdf->Cell(110,6,date('d.m.Y'),0);
$frontpdf->Output('./pdfs/your_data.pdf', 'F');
For details see http://www.fpdf.org/
Use 'I' or 'D' instead of 'F' in last line if you want to send pdf file instead of saving it. You can use FPDF in php4 as well.
Copied from here:
<?php
// We'll be outputting a PDF
header('Content-type: application/pdf');
// It will be called downloaded.pdf
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="downloaded.pdf"');
// The PDF source is in original.pdf
readfile('original.pdf');
?>
Set the action url of your form to a php file like the one above.
You will need a pdf generator and i recommend you to use tcpdf:
http://www.tcpdf.org/
It is open source and when you download the library you have more than 50 or 60 how to use example scripts.
Unlike other open/source libraries i know that this one actually supports utf-8 (depends on the font used). I tested fpdf, dompdf and few others becouse i needed these characters in my documents: č, ć, ž, š, đ and that is the only library i could use for that.
If you need a specific example show me your code and i'll help you :)

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