I want to generate a PDF of a webpage but apply an alternate, print-type stylesheet to it instead of the styles it uses now. Say, for example, I have a button on http://eorailway.co.uk to generate a PDF of the same page (which is run and administered by me, so therefore I can include any PHP/JS necessary to each page) but I want to apply alternate styling to it before generating the PDF.
At the moment I am using the dompdf PHP library to generate the PDF using the normal/default stylesheet, but cannot for the life of me think how to apply the alternate stylesheet to the page when clicking the "Generate PDF" button.
Any advice is most appreciated.
Since the site is under control, you could dynamically decide which stylesheets to include based on a query string parameter. i.e. http://example.com/page.php?stylesheet=print would have your template output only the alternate stylesheet, and your PDF library would fetch that page to generate.
I would recommend making an alternate page with the "print" stylesheet applied and point to it using the print meta tag. (e.g. <link rel="alternate" media="print" href="<? ECHO $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'?print'; ?>""> )
Then have PHP determine the stylesheet to use based on the presence of that GET variable.
You can use the DOMXML stuff in php to apply a specific XSLT file to some XML:
$stylsheet = "Example.xsl";
$xsldoc = domxml_xslt_stylesheet_file($stylsheet);
$htmldoc = $xsldoc->process($xmldoc);
$results_page = $xsldoc->result_dump_mem($htmldoc);
That's something I did in php4, might be an easier way in 5.
In the 0.6.0 release of DOMPDF you can specify the stylesheet to use by modifying the DOMPDF_DEFAULT_MEDIA_TYPE configuration constant.
http://code.google.com/p/dompdf/source/browse/trunk/dompdf/dompdf_config.inc.php?r=336#234
Related
In Adobe Acrobat there is an option to add a "background" to a PDF file and set the default settings that this image should be visible when opening the document but should not be printed out. I want to automate the process by a PHP script.
I checked all the popular PHP PDF libs (TCPDF, FPDF, mPDF, ...) but none of them seems to provide such an option. All I found is adding images by the ->Image method and place it behind the text. This does work when viewing the document, but of course it is also printed out.
A second approach is to render plain HTML and include custom stylesheets. I created the simple HTML
<h1>Simple text.</h1>
<div>
<p>Should be printed.
<img src="..."></p>
</div>
<div class="no-print">
<p>Should NOT be printed.
<img src="..."></p>
</div>
and saved the CSS in print.css
.no-print {
display: none;
}
and included it by:
<link rel="stylesheet" media=“print” type="text/css" href="print.css">
The result does not show the second div. I guess the PDF libs do not evaluate the media in the link tag. To be honest this approach does not feel right, especially because PDF !== HTML.
Nevertheless I cannot imagine that this is so difficult. How do all the big companies manage this? I'm grateful for every hint!
I am using DomPDF to generate PDF-Files. This works fine, but I want to set the default page layout which is used by opening the document. I want to have a 100% view when the document is viewed. Actually the page is streched to the max width of the window.
Does anybody know a solution how to set the page layout to "single site"?
Regards,
Lothron
You can do this in dompdf by specifying the view in a meta element, e.g.
<meta name="dompdf.view" content="FitV" />
or
<meta name="dompdf.view" content="XYZ,0,0,1" />
You can also call the set_default_view() method of the canvas class, e.g.
$dompdf->get_canvas()->set_default_view('FitV')
Using the above method can only be done after the PDF document has been instantiated. As of dompdf 0.6.1 that is done after calling $dompdf->render().
Ref: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/dompdf/7L2xMLwmH-Y/Et2mBNny51QJ
So I am using the codeigniter pdf library from: https://github.com/chrisnharvey/CodeIgniter-PDF-Generator-Library
And it works wonders except, It doesn't keep the style sheet when the pdf is generated.
I am trying to use bootstrap to make it look nice, But when I run the script and download the pdf it doesn't have the styling anymore. What do I need to do to keep the stylesheet linked?
My Controller:
public function AdminPracticeSheetLateReport()
{
$this->load->view('pdf/practiceLateReport');
$this->pdf->load_view('pdf/practiceLateReport');
$this->pdf->render();
$this->pdf->stream("welcome.pdf");
}
I am loading the bootstrap stylesheet like so in my view:
<link href="//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.1.1/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet">
Is this even possible with this plugin? If not it's quite the crappy plugin if you ask me.
BTW: This library for codeigniter uses the DomPDF
I just checked the source code of codeigniter and noticed that it does not itself make a PDF, but uses DOMPDF in turn (which is another PHP library). codeigniter does not properly send the html and css to DOMPDF, so in my suggestion you should remove codeigniter and use DOMPDF instead. This should correct your problem and also speed up the conversion by a few miliseconds.
So my school has this very annoying way to view my rooster.
you have to bypass 5 links to get to my rooster.
this is the link for my class (it updates weekly without changing the link)
https://webuntis.a12.nl/WebUntis/?school=roc%20a12#Timetable?type=1&departmentId=0&id=2147
i want to display the content from that page on my website but with my
own stylesheet.
i don't mean this:
<?php
$homepage = file_get_contents('http://www.example.com/');
echo $homepage;
?>
or an iframe....
I think this can be better done using jquery and ajax. You can get jquery to load the target page, use selectors to strip out what you need, then attach it to your document tree. You should then be able to style it anyway you like.
I would recommend you to use the cURL library: http://www.php.net/manual/en/curl.examples.php
But you have to extract part of the page you want to display, because you will get the whole HTML document.
You'd probably read the whole page into a string variable (using file_get_contents like you mentioned for example) and parse the content, here you have some possibilities:
Regular expressions
Walking the DOM tree (eg. using PHPs DOMDocument classes)
After that, you'd most likely replace all the style="..." or class="..." information with your own.
I am having trouble using a script I found at http://www.marcofolio.net/webdesign/use_a_custom_font_on_your_website.html
The problem is, when I load a page, the text shows up then each word is replaced by a generated image of it using the PHP GD lib.
It creates a flicker effect that I can't seem to get rid of. There are options is the js file:
var hideFlicker = true;
var hideFlickerCSS = "replacement-screen.css";
var hideFlickerTimeout = 0;
But when I change any of those settings, nothing happens.
Please help!
Thank you.
For what you seem to be trying to do, image replacement is an extremely outdated method. All the ninja-devs are using technology called #font-face for their fonts and font replacements.
It's simpler, doesn't require anything to happen on the server and text on the page can be modified dynamically.
You can use services like http://www.fontsquirrel.com/ or http://code.google.com/webfonts for ready made font packages.
If you have a custom font (that you have a license for) you can create an #font-face package for it, using fontsquirrel's #font-face generator: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator
And then you just define your fonts in the CSS. Simple, elegant and works in 99% of browsers (yes, even IE6)
Cheers!