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.
Related
I hope you are doing well.
I need to know about a PHP library that converts a PDF file having images as well to be converted in a HTML file with the following features that the library can do.
HTML file needs to be of version 3.2 compatible
Save the images in PDF file having .jpg extension
Correct font from PDF needs to be used in the HTML file.
A result folder that contains the images and html file in one folder
I have tried most of the PHP libraries but most of the PHP libraries are NOT doing my needed tasks.
Please, help let me know about a library that do all the above 4 requirements (image attached for reference)
Waiting for your kind responses.
Thanks
I am not very sure, But here is a library in PHP I found.
Here
Try this:
http://www.pdfaid.com/pdf-to-html.aspx
Or this:
http://webdesign.about.com/od/pdf/tp/tools-for-converting-pdf-to-html.htm
Or this...
http://www.pdfconvertonline.com/pdf-to-html-online.html
There are plenty of options available to you, the secret is to use a new fangled thing called a Search Engine, such as a Bing or a Google.
you will also do well to research on Stack Overflow before asking your question:
1) HTML 3.2 wes superceeded in 1997, this is very nearly twenty years ago, why on eart are you still needing a comparatively ancient technology when there are far better improvements available such as XML HTML, HTML 4.01 and HTML5.
2) Please read How can I extract embedded fonts from a PDF as valid font files?
3) Also to extract images you can use:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/extract-images-pdf-files-save-windows/
but again, there are several options available to you if you care to look for them.
You seem to imply a fundamental misunderstanding about HTML; there are several different ways of getting any desired result with HTML. You have a PDF file and you want it to look a certain way, this look depends on the browser you are looking at it on. For example if you use a PDF to HTML converter as linked above you will very probably find that the output will look different on Internet Explorer 7 versus on Firefox versus Internet Explorer 10. There is no one way of writing output on HTML or with CSS.
If you want a custom built library to do your specific task then you will need to employ a professional to do it, or you will need to code it yourself. This obviously should be charged to the client for requiring a technology that is extremely outdated. You can probably search github for a similar library (the one linked by CK Khan looks like what you're after) and then fork it and make your own variation for your needs. I very much doubt anyone is going to put time into developing a system to output HTML 3.2 from a PDF, and even less likely to develop this system for free and to your exact specifications.
It also appears that you can not directly incorporate font families into the <font> tag in HTML 3.2, only being able to edit size and colour of fonts. You can use CSS1 font-family to show font families. See here.
We have a high-resolution PDF (for printing) which has some form fields on it. We would like to have an HTML form which submits to the PDF, which is then placed into the respective fields.
I found a solution on google: http://koivi.com/fill-pdf-form-fields/
However, with that solution you only get an FDF file... And the demo does not work for me, opening the FDF file simply downloads another FDF file.
Since this PDF will be available to the public we would like to keep it as simple as possible. If we must open our original PDF and import this FDF file, we need a different solution (which I'm not sure is what the FDF file is for, since it didn't work).
A related post talking about .net framework had the same idea, but there were only paid commercial solutions: From HTML form to PDF
The PHP solutions I have found so far are for creating a new PDF, which is not what I need. Our PDF is created with Adobe Illustrator (or a similar adobe product) and is high-res with embedded fonts, svg and image content.
The form elements are in place, we just need to get the data to there.
Update April 11, 2013:
Since posting this question I have been utilizing FPDF on multiple projects where I needed to accomplish this goal. Although it cannot seem to "merge" template PDFs with the provided data, it can create the PDF from scratch.
One example I have used, I had a high resolution PNG for printing (similar to initial question) which we had to write the customer's name and today's date clearly in the center. I simply made the background of the PDF using FPDF->Image() and write the text afterwards using FPDF->Text().
It was very simple after all, you will need to look up the paper sizes to determine the X,Y,W,H of the image and then base your text fields relative to those numbers.
There was even a Form Filling extension, but I couldn't get it to work.
It seems as though I should answer my own question, although Visions answer may be better (seems to be deleted?). I used Vasiliy Faronov's link which was a comment to my main question: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1890835/200445
Here I found how to install pdftk and run a command to merge (flatten) my FDF and PDF files. I still used the "hacky" way to generate an FDF using Koivi's FDF Generator but it works for the most part.
One caveat is that some characters, like single and double quotes are not inserted correctly. It may be an issue of escaping the fields, but I could not find an answer.
Regardless, my PDF form generator is working, but anyone with a similar issue should look for a better solution.
There are number of tools which are not paid like itextsharp. try the following https://web.archive.org/web/20211020001747/https://www.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/030211-1.aspx Hope this code will help you. I have tried it its worked for me. If you can pay then there are number of paid tools which convert the HtML to PDF like ABCPDF etc.This example is in Asp.net and i am sure if you can convert it in PHP it will work for you too.
I have used DOMpdf, mpdf, tcpdf and is not succeeded with the output.
I am putting here everything I have tried, including HTML.
OUTPUT PREVIEW :
Direct View File: http://jsfiddle.net/QdhdW/
DOMpdf and mPDF Output: https://www.box.com/s/f7cb2283d196db530702
ISSUES :
DOM pdf :
Bad looking CSS (and not exact as per required)
leaves 6-7 page
brakes in pdf the records are out of page then doesn't come to next page
mPDF :
makes output as small as possible, so that all records are covered in one page. (doesn't good as it is for A4 Page)
The Borders between each rows. (in HTML there is no borders between the rows.)
I don't mind using any pdf generator library and even if we change CSS
or make CSS inline, doesn't matter. The thing is I am seeking the PDF
output same as displayed in view File.
Please Help me, to figure it out. Struggling since yesterday.
Take a look at wkhtmltopdf it's a shell utility to convert html to pdf using the webkit rendering engine, and qt.
This will give you a much better result than the others as it's not trying to parse the html/css in php.
Finally I got it Solved.
Thanx to everyone for trying.
Solved it in DOM Pdf only, via changing the CSS.
Edited:
Make it worked through this
http://code.google.com/p/dompdf/issues/detail?id=507
If anyone else is having issue.
PhantomJS uses the webkit renderer and can output to PDF.
http://code.google.com/p/phantomjs/wiki/QuickStart
pdfcrowd is a web service for converting HTML to PDF.
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 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!