Complicated question with a (hopefully) simple answer.
I'm looking into FPDF to export a web-page to a PDF. The web-page has been formatted for Print media, but since print media can be kind of iffy with CSS/HTML rendered object, I was hoping exporting to a PDF and then printing would make for less of a design headache.
I've scrounged through the FPDF website and I'm not seeing a function for the one thing I was hoping to see. Some kind of include() function. I see a bunch of lines about formatting content, which I'm hoping means
Am I over thinking this? Can I simply use include() after the FPDF constructor and then any content from there in will be printed with the page?
The FPDF library is not meant for directly rendering HTML markup into a PDF.
If that's what you're looking to do, you could try one of the solutions designed specifically for that purpose. For example, the html2pdf library, which among other things is based on the FPDF library. You can also consider using an external API like DocRaptor, which is a cost-effective solution based on the very costly Prince XML program.
Related
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.
I want to generate PDF from a PHP file that includes HTML controls like textbox, and textarea. I attached CSS in the same. I tried FPDF, DOMPDF and TCPDF, but still I don't get exactly what I want. How do I pass HTML controls with PHP variables and CSS to these libraries?
mpdf is another option that you could try.
EDIT :
Found another solution for it, TCPDF is a FLOSS PHP class for generating PDF documents. Looks more dominating library.
"PRINCEXML" is a good library (not completely free now).
Others:
If your meaning is to create a PDF file from PHP, pdflib will help you (as some other suggested).
Else, if you want to convert an HTML page in PDF via PHP, you'll find
a little trouble outta here.. For three years I have been trying to do it as best as I
can.
So, the options I know are:
HTML2PS: same of DOMPDF, but this one convert first in .ps
(Ghostscript), then, in whatever format you need (PDF, JPEG, PNG). For
me it is a little better than dompdf, but I have the same speed problem.. Oh,
it has better compatibility with CSS.
Those two are PHP classes, but if you can install some software on the
server, and access it through passthru() or system(), have a look at
these too:
wkhtmltopdf: based on webkit (safari's wrapper), is really fast and
powerful... It seem like it is the best one (atm) for converting HTML pages to PDF on the fly, taking only two seconds for a three pages XHTML document
with CSS 2. It is a recent project. Anyway, the Google Code page is often
updated.
htmldoc: this one is a tank, it really never stops orcrashes... The project
seems to have died in 2007, but anyway if you don't need CSS compatibility
this can be nice for you.
** Thumbs Up For Strae.
If I understand your needs correctly I don't think any PHP-PDF class would do that.
Mostly you could insert only text and images to a PDF file, so if you would want something that looks like an HTML element you would need to insert it as an image.
Usually just putting HTML doesn't mean all your elements would stay intact in the PDF . (Different world, after all)
http://www.fpdf.org/ is the site having a great HTML-to-PDF class which work well. I am using it, but you have to first study its functionality and then start.
I'm developing an app where the user adds items to a list. That list is stored in an array and passed to PHP with JSON.
The objective is to then create a PDF with all the values extracted from the user. The PDF is quite complicated. It includes images depending on what the user selects and the text varies depending on the images and the input data.
The first idea was to generate the pdf in php with one of those pdf libraries, but that's going to be a real hassle.
Then I thought of creating an html & css (much easier) and the convert it to PDF. But since the html & css are quite complex I don't think those pdf converters will work with this.
Then I thought I could convert the html to jpg and then to pdf.
It'll be much simpler if I could just use html but the output needs to be pdf.
What do you suggest?
Here's a post that discusses creating PDF files with PHP and the PDFLib extension.
Generate PDFs with PHP it's on sitepoint.
Or if you want to go from HTML to the PDF it looks like TCPDF might work.
You can try using FPDF
Then I thought of creating an html & css (much easier) and the convert it to PDF. But since the html & css are quite complex I don't think those pdf converters will work with this.
wkhtmltopdf to the rescue! If you are on a VPS or dedicated machine, it's probably the best (open source) HTML-to-PDF engine out there. It leverages Webkit, the rendering engine used by Google Chrome and Apple Safari, amongst others.
Otherwise, your only other options are going to involve drawing every aspect of the PDF or image yourself, "by hand" in your code.
I am trying to understand what is the interest of HTML2PDF versus using directly TCPDF.
In order words, What are the benifit of HTML2PDF ? Why it's better that use directly TCPDF ?
as you know HTML2PDF (for PHP 5.x) is based on TCPDF.
HTML2PDF handles HTML better than TCPDF, and HTML2PDF can use CSS Classes, and have a couple more of cool functions, specially for dynamic content which TCPDF alone does not handle well. think of it as "TCPDF++"
Download HTML2PDF or go to their website and look at the examples, they will show you better than me!!
Don't forget to set set_time_limit() when generating large documents, to know why look # this post.
For some developers, it is faster to write a template that produces specific HTML instead of expressly making all of the necessary API calls to build the PDF one piece of text and one box at a time.
I'm personally a big fan of wkhtmltopdf, which uses the popular, powerful and standards-compliant WebKit rendering engine. Most common HTML-to-PDF programs either don't understand CSS, or understand CSS poorly.
I have a PDF document with some external links.
I'd like to parse the document, replace the destination of the links then close (and serve) the PDF document, all using PHP
I know I can do this with PDFLib but I don't want to incur this cost.
I could re-write the document with FPDF or DomPDF, but some of these PDFs are quite complex so this would be a major time investment.
Surely there must be a way to do this directly to PDF docs, using native PHP?
TIA
I don't think there is a text/hyperlink changer class for PHP. The closest products, like pdftk, only does higher-level stuff like merging, splitting and applying watermarks.
Changing a pdf is much more difficult than generating it, so you need to use a pdf editor like Nitro PDF (untested), or why not Acrobat/Illustrator/InDesign.
If you must use PHP, regenerating the PDF:s with one of the free classes seems to be your best choice. I like FPDF very much, it gets my recommendation. If you decide to use it, check out FPDI as well, it can use existing PDF files as a template, maybe it will help you. Good luck!