Creating a new PDF by Merging PDF documents using TCPDF - php

How can I create a new document using other PDFs that I'm generating?
I have methods to create some documents, and I want to merge them all in a big PDF, how can I do that with TCPDF?
I do not want to use other libs.

TCPDF has a tcpdf_import class, added in 2011, but it is still "under development". If you don't want to use anything outside of TCPDF, you're out of luck!
But FPDI is an excellent addition to TCPDF: it's like an addon. It's as simple as this:
require_once('tcpdf/tcpdf.php');
require_once('fpdi/fpdi.php'); // the addon
// FPDI extends the TCPDF class, so you keep all TCPDF functionality
$pdf = new FPDI();
$pdf->setSourceFile("document.pdf"); // must be pdf version 1.4 or below
// FPDI's importPage returns an object that you can insert with TCPDF's useTemplate
$pdf->useTemplate($pdf->importPage(1));
Done!
See also this question:
TCPDF and FPDI with multiple pages

Why don't you use Zend_PDF, it 's really a very good way to merge file.
<?php
require_once 'Zend/Pdf.php';
$pdf1 = Zend_Pdf::load("1.pdf");
$pdf2 = Zend_Pdf::load("2.pdf");
foreach ($pdf2->pages as $page){
$pdf1->pages[] = $page;
}
$pdf1->save('3.pdf');
?>

Hi i think TCPDF is not able to merge pdf files.
You can try it with an shell command and
PDFTK Toolkit
So you dont have to use an other pdf library.

This thread is from 2009, but using existing PDFs in PHP is still an issue in 2020.
After Zend_PDF has been abandoned and TCPDI does not support PHP 7, FPDI currently seems one of the few working solutions left in 2020. It can be used with TCPDF and FPDF, so existing code keeps working. And it currently seems well maintained.

Check out FPDI and FPDF_TPL. This isn't a perfect solution, but you can basically use FPDF_TPL to create a template of your PDF file and the insert it into your PDF file.

Related

How to insert an image from PHP into PDF 1.7

I'm creating a web app that allows a canvas form to insert an image from a HTML canvas into a particular position in multiple PDF files. I had this working with python flask as a back-end but the people that I'm making it for only want it in PHP. I have tried using libraries like FPDI but they only work with PDF versions up to 1.4 while the PDF files we are using are version 1.7.
Does anyone know any possible libraries that can help me solve this issue. I would prefer not to convert the PDF files if possible.
Cheers
With TCPDF you can insert images into a PDF (v.1.7) file:
Requirements
composer require tecnickcom/tcpdf
Example
<?php
require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';
$pdf = new TCPDF();
$pdf->setPDFVersion('1.7');
$pdf->setAutoPageBreak(true);
$pdf->setPrintHeader(false);
$pdf->setPrintFooter(false);
$pdf->AddPage();
// Insert image
$pdf->setJPEGQuality(100);
$pdf->image(__DIR__ . '/example.jpg', 10, 10);
// Close and output PDF document
//$pdf->output('doc.pdf', 'I');
// Save the pdf file
$content = $pdf->output('', 'S');
file_put_contents('example.pdf', $content);
We (Setasign, creator of FPDI) offer a commercial add-on that let you import PDFs which uses a compression technic that was introduced in PDF 1.5.
You may also try to downgrade these documents with an external program. I'm aware of some people using Ghostscript for this.
Generally you should know that you do not insert an image into the existing PDF but you create a completely new PDF while importing a single page into a reusable structure which you place onto a newly created page. On top of this you place the image.
With FPDI you cannot edit a PDF document.

Can I pass my view to FPDF to generate PDF?

Previously i was working with dompdf in laravel application to generate invoices.. Its taking time in generating invoices but working perfectly . Below is the code of dompdf to generate invoice by just sending the view.
PDF::setOptions(['dpi' => 150, 'defaultFont' => 'sans-serif']);
// pass view file
view()->share('account_invoice',$account_invoice);
view()->share('account_invoice_item',$account_invoice_item);
$pdf = PDF::loadView('admin/invoice/InvoiceTemplate/template');
But now i am working with FPDF. Is there anything like dompdf to pass view to generate PDF.
$pdf = new FPDF();
View::make('admin/invoice/InvoiceTemplate/template');
I know my code is incorrect for FPDF but any idea how can i pass view to FPDF to generate pdf so i can send it by attactment.
It looks like your goal is to dump raw html onto the pdf and have it be formatted accordingly? Take a look at this tutorial, it might help, but I'd actually recommend a different approach.
Basically, fpdf is has no html writer built in, at least none as far as I'm aware. So I'd recommend a pdf writer with better out of the box support for your needs. Take a look at Snappy and wkhtmltopdf. With Snappy and wkhtmltopdf you can pretty easily generate pdfs on the fly by passing it html, as you're attempting to in your examples.
<?php
use Knp\Snappy\Pdf;
$snappy = new Pdf('/path/to/wkhtmltopdf');
$snappy->generateFromHtml(View::make('admin/invoice/InvoiceTemplate/template'), '/tmp/invoice.pdf');

Webpage convert to PDF button

I have a website now and I want to create a button on it to convert this page to PDF.
Is there any code to make this happen? I cannot find it on the internet.
So I want to have a button and when I press on it it converts the page to a .PDF file.
I do not want to use a third party website to generate the PDF's. I want to use it for internal purposes to generate files with PHP. So I need the code what can make a PDF for each page.
I use wkhtmltopdf - works very well - http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/ there is a PHP wrapper
Updated based on comments below on usage :
How to use the integration class:
require_once('wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltopdf.php'); // Ensure this path is correct !
$html = file_get_contents("http://www.google.com");
$pdf = new WKPDF();
$pdf->set_html($html);
$pdf->render();
$pdf->output(WKPDF::$PDF_EMBEDDED,'sample.pdf');
Use FPDF. It's a well-respected PDF-generating library for PHP that is written in pure PHP (so installing it should be dead simple for you).
Try this:
http://www.macronimous.com/resources/Converting_HTML2PDF_using_PHP.asp
It will convert HTML to a PDF using FPDF and HTML2PDF class.
Also found this:
http://www.phpclasses.org/package/3168-PHP-Generate-PDF-documents-from-HTML-pages.html

using TCPDF and FPDI together

I have a doubt about using TCPDF and FPDI together.
I am working on a project where I need to modify existing PDF file and generate new PDF, actually existing PDF are Greeting card template and I have to print certain data at certain pages (such as Image on first page, message on 3rd page, artwork on 4th page) to generate final PDF.
I googled and found with TCPDF, it is not possible to manipulate existing PDF, they suggested using FPDI for opening and manipulating existing PDF.
That's where i am stuck. I need TCPDF (it methods to print images, transparent images, utf text, embed font etc) to do what I want to do, but, I need FPDI to start with. :(.
Please help me: is it possible to use both FPDI and TCPDF together? so that I can use features offered by both APIs ?
Thanks in advance...
http://www.setasign.de/products/pdf-php-solutions/fpdi/about/
"As of version 1.2.1 FPDI can be used with TCPDF - a derivate of FPDF."
libraries_load('tcpdf');
libraries_load('fpdi');
$pdf = new FPDI();
$pdf->setSourceFile("%local_file_path%");
$tplIdx = $pdf->importPage(1);
$pdf->AddPage('L', array(3.5, 2), FALSE);
$pdf->useTemplate($tplIdx, 0, 0, 3.5, 2, false);
I was using Drupal at the time so I used libraries_load but require_once should work.

tcpdf - start with existing PDF document

I have several PDF templates that I would like to load and modify and output using tcpdf.
Is it possible to load an existing PDF and use it as a starting point in tcpdf?
You want to use FPDI.
There's some example code here.
I have tried the free version of FPDI but does not support PDF version 1.5 or higher.
If someone else is looking for a free solution I have used TCPDI. You can find it on github https://github.com/pauln/tcpdi
If you are using composer, you can find some fork for composer too. Just search tcpdi on github.
Once you add it to your project, the code is quite simple. It is an extension of TCPDF so all your previous code keep working
This is a snippet from my code. I used it to save a copy of the privacy policy (a static pdf) with the user name and agreement date on each page footer.
// Create new PDF document
$pdf = new TCPDI(PDF_PAGE_ORIENTATION, PDF_UNIT, PDF_PAGE_FORMAT, true, 'UTF-8', false);
...
// Add the pages from the source file.
$pagecount = $pdf->setSourceFile($policyPdfPath);
for ($i = 1; $i <= $pagecount; $i++) {
$tplidx = $pdf->importPage($i);
$pdf->AddPage();
$pdf->useTemplate($tplidx);
// Add agreement text in document footer
$pdf->SetXY(15,282);
$pdf->Cell(180, 5, "Documento approvato da {$fullName} il {$date}", 0, 0, 'C');
}
// Send PDF on output
$pdf->Output(FOLDER_PATH . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . "{$userId}.pdf", 'F');
For anyone else finding this, it does appear a PARSER and import class were built for TCPDF (https://tcpdf.org/docs/srcdoc/TCPDF/source-class-TCPDF_IMPORT/#50-100) but as of 2018 was still under development.
Its also worth noting that the solutions above do not allow the contents of the PDF pages to be edited. In other words you import the page as a whole, you cannot edit text content or images.
You can use fpdf with fpdi. You can’t modify directly a template, but you can add a text cell with a white background to cache the old content (note that the old content can be read by using some tools). Then save your new pdf. This tools are relatively easy to use. To resolve the fact that fpdi not read 1.5 pdf version in the free version, you can convert 1.5 version in 1.4 version by using ghost script with the exec command. I use this and work fine.

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