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.
Related
I want the option of converting HTML to image and showing the result to the user. I would be creating an $html variable with PHP, and instead of displaying using echo $html, I want to display it as an image so the user can save the file if they needed to.
I was hoping there would something as simple as $image = convertHTML2Image($html); :p if that exists?!
Thanks!!
As #Pekka says, the job of turning HTML code into an image is the job of a full-blown web browser.
If you want to do this sort of thing, you therefore need to have a script that does the following:
Opens the page in a browser.
Captures the rendered page from the browser as a graphic.
Outputs that graphic to your user.
Traditionally, this would have been a tough task, because web browsers are typically driven by the user and not easy to automate in this way.
Fortunately, there is now a solution, in the form of PhantomJS.
PhantomJS is a headless browser, designed for exactly this kind of thing -- automated tasks that require a full-blown rendering engine.
It's basically a full browser, but without the user interface. It renders the page content exactly as another browser would (it's based on Webkit, so results are similar to Chrome), and it can be controlled by a script.
As it says on the PhantomJS homepage, one of its target use-cases is for taking screenshots or thumbnail images of websites.
(another good use for it is automated testing of your site, where it is also a great tool)
Hope that helps.
This is not possible in pure PHP.
What you call "converting" is in fact a huge, non-trivial task: the HTML page has to be rendered. To do this in PHP, you'd have to rewrite an entire web browser.
You'll either have to use an external tool (which usually taps into a browser's rendering engine) or a web service (which does the same).
It is possible to convert html to image. However, first you must convert to PDF. see link
You may have a look at dompdf which is a php framework to convert a html file to a pdf.
use WKHTMLTOPDF. works like a charm. it converts to any page to PDF ..
a jpeg can be obtained by performing later operation.
http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/
I'm developing a PHP MySql website in which pdf will be uploaded by site administrator. Viewers will get a list of all the pdf documents.
What I want is:
To open the PDF in my <div>.
No user should be able to download the PDF by any means.
I tried google doc viewer, it simply converts pdf to images which can be saved easily.
Also it gives View in Full option by which one can easily download the pdf.
And ofcourse,
<div><object data="test.pdf" type="application/pdf" width="300" height="200"></object></div>
is not working.
Please help..
You can use an iframe to embed a PDF inside a div, though it will rely on them having a PDF-reader plugin enabled on their browser. However, there is no way to show a PDF to a user in a way that does not let them save it
In order to read the PDF they HAVE to save a tmp version on their computer in any case, so you simply cannot prevent them from having a copy if they want.
There are a variety of ways to make it more difficult, but that's it. Tieson's solution, which draws the PDF to an HTML5 canvass makes it difficult to get the original PDF for non-technical users, but it only took about 2 minutes for me to find the PDF source and download the original (i.e. http://hazaar.funkynerd.com/pdfdoc/get?file=acr5smallpdf_80327_7.pdf). There are other, similar approaches using java or flash that don't actually show the PDF, but rather a rendering of the PDF by a third-party plugin, which will make it even more difficult, but even then the user could re-create the PDF using third-party tools or just simple screenshots, etc.
It's not really 100% reliable/stable, but there is a jQuery plugin for Mozilla's experimental PDF.js at http://dev.funkynerd.com/projects/jquery-pdfdoc
Currently working on an offshoot of the idea more adequately addressed here.
Creating a Secure File Hosting Server for PDFs
I'm developing a secure PDF hosting website where certain users can download certain PDF's that I have stored outside of the webroot to prevent people from accessing documents they shouldn't access.
I've got the download working using the first solution, but I want to implement a 'view/preview' feature too. I still don't get content headers as well as I should but I believe what is causing the bulk of my issues is I can't put a 'src' attribute on the embed/object/iframe/whatever. And that's kind of the point of the system.
My question is, is there any way to feed a file (as opposed to a url) to an embed/object? I would like to keep my current system and I'm going for simplicity at the moment so the easier the better.
I saw Recommended way to embed PDF in HTML? and will probably check out pdf.js if I'm trying something that isn't doable.
I have not yet had the chance to play with pdf.js, but it either that or a flash player of some sort.
Or you rely on the browser to display it has a webpage and you can iframe it, but that's so lame... it would work only for a fraction of you users.
PDF2SWF - convert PDF to SWF ( 1 page = 1 SWF).
Use other SWF (reader) to load SWF pages via XML or something else.
Use $_SESSION to store ID of PDF document which should be served through e.g. /preview (same link for previewing all documents)
Don't serve original PDF, put a watermark, or make them low-res.
Otherwise, your PDF will never be "secure".
http://www.swftools.org/
I am working on improving a daily tasks which could be sped up if what I need exists. It could save me about 2 hours of work a day if it can be done. My current way of generating reports is long. Here is my current flow.
I click generate report and the report is automatically generated using PHP, CSS, & HTML.
I work on a Mac, so in order to save the report as a PDF, I click on "print". The print window appears and I then click on "Save As PDF".
I save this report to my desktop. I then upload it to my server.
The 3 steps above is my current process. What I would like to be able to do is this:
I click generate report and the report is automatically generated using PHP, CSS, & HTML.
If the report looks good, I click on "save". The save button will automatically generate a PDF and will upload it to my server.
Is this possible? If so, can someone point me in the right direction. I prefer to do this with PHP, but if there's another way I can do this, that is fine as well.
If you'd like to learn how to do this, and well, there are great resources available to you.
In fact, Welling/Thomson's PHP and MySQL Web Development has two chapters that are perfect you. Chapter 19 deals with files and Chapter 32 is entitled "Generating Personalized PDF Documents." I recommend you give it a thorough read.
If you encounter problems along the way, then you should come back here and post them in discrete components.
you could use MPDF, a great tool to generate pdfs.
check: http://www.mpdf1.com/mpdf/ download the pack and check the examples. :D sorry about the english
PHP doesn't have a built-in PDF generator, although there are libraries you can add that will do it. Creating the PDF by outputting the correct formatting is non-trivial.
Instead, you can use an HTML to PDF converter - I've used them on Linux, such as wkhtmltopdf, so they should work okay on a Mac, too. You would just generate the report as normal, but output it to a file rather than the browser. Then run the converter on the HTML and presto, a PDF version.
I want to overlap pictures, but it is not working and I need some help.
Here's the link to the page I'd like to convert:
http://9m9.com/innovative/sample/two.html
I want to convert this page to a PDF. You can see the small image overlapping the bigger one.
This is the page where you can click on a link that will convert the page to PDF.
http://citysoftsolutions.com/eclients/virtualtour/view_property_images.php?pid=9&uid=67
As you can see the image is placed behind the big image.
I'm using this converter script: http://mpdf.bpm1.com/
When I printed it using PrimoPDF driver it came out just fine. Last image was easily laid over. So there must be a bug with the script you're using.
What do I suggest?
If you'd like to convert your pages to PDFs "on the fly" I suggest you either
contact script creator and inform them of a bug in the script
use a different script (I'd check out this question that can help you)
If you'd like to just provide PDFs of your page I suggest you install a PDF printer driver (like PrimoPDF that I'm using) and print those pages yourself and use those.
I'm not working for Nitro PDF Software company nor am I related to them in any way. So this is not me advertising their products/services.
On a sidenote
Something's telling me that what you'd actually like to do is to create a PDF flyer/promo material or something. If that's actually what you're after I suggest you do that using some software that's meant for such a job. Microsoft Office Word will do, but you'll better off using some other. If it's a one page leaflet you could use Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. But if it's going to be an actual multipage document use something like Word or Adobe InDesign.
Word is probably something you can easily master. So go with that one.