I have spent a lot of time trying to get dompdf (http://www.digitaljunkies.ca/dompdf/) to work but I keep running into problems. I am trying to generate a PDF from a PHP script which generates a fairly complex, filled out web form. The script accepts a $_GET parameter (record number) and fills out the form accordingly with data from the database. I have no problem getting this data into the script as a string or any type of value really. What I am wondering is what the best approach would be for converting this type of data to a PDF?
The flow is as follows: user completes form and is taken to confirmation page which I would like to add a "Save as PDF" button. At this point one of two things could happen, the page that is currently being displayed in the browser could be spun directly to a pdf or a call to itself (scriptname.php?id=xyz) could be made using something like PHP's http_get() function and store the HTML as a string. From there I am having issues with preparing an accurate representation as a PDF.
I have heard some talk about fpdf but their examples don't really lead me to believe you can use dynamic data as the source, but please correct me if I am wrong about this.
Any input would be appreciated.
-- Nicholas
Well, I didn't know dompdf. Strange that it uses either a commercial library (PDFlib) or an outdated (?) one (CPDF, not updated for 3 years). But well, as long as it works (concept is interesting).
I don't understand what you mean by "use dynamic data as the source" (or rather, I see not point in generating static PDF!), but FPDF is used to generate various dynamic documents, like invoices in e-commerce products. I saw people using forks (like TCPDF) to handle Unicode data, though.
You can't transform an HTML page to PDF with FPDF, but you have a quite precise control of layout, using concept of cells with data.
You can see such kind of code there: http://svn.prestashop.com/trunk/classes/PDF.php
In the past when faced with this issue, I have used FPDF for the placement of data on a PDF template. Then, by setting the appropriate HTTP header, force the browser to pop open the Download / Save As box for the user to save said PDF.
In a class that extends FPDF/FPDI appropriately, use something like the following to generate a PDF from a template PDF you've already created (http://www.setasign.de/products/pdf-php-solutions/fpdi/):
$this->setSourceFile('pdf_template.pdf');
$template_page = $this->importPage(1, '/MediaBox');
$this->useTemplate($template_page, 0, 0);
Then, have FPDF generate the PDF for output using:
$this->Output();
You can also extend FPDF to accept (limited) HTML for formatting using the script found here: http://www.fpdf.org/en/script/script41.php
Related
is there any possible way to not lose any content, when inserting an image into a filled pdf, i am using the fpdm.php script from here and works prettty good i might add. the pdfs i am using i pass them trough pdftk, as in pdftk.exe insert.pdf output output.pdf so they can be filled via php with out throwing errors
so my problem is this, i have a pdf template, which i use to fill it with an array passed from php, and output it to browser or server, and works ok, but when i try to insert an image into it, it inserts it, but loses all filled data, i need to retain that data. i cant use pdftk because im on a godaddy shared hosting plan, also setasign scripts works i know, but i am trying to find a way without buying anything yet.
i found this stamper which stamps ok but loses pdf data, all boxes get blanked, and also this one that places the image and loses all data too. setasign is doing some magic stuff right there
All mentioned scripts are using FPDI in the background which simply doesn't modifes the original document but will allow you to recreate a completely new PDF document by importing another one page by page into reuseable structures (XObjects). Because form fields or other dynamic content like links or any other annotation type are not part of a pages content stream they will get lost.
The mentioned "magic" of the SetaPDF products is, that they modify the original document. Because of this all content will retain.
Our company allows its clients to view reports via our website. The pages are php based and the data is collected from MySQL. These reports were written a long time ago and include inline css. The pages themselves look fine, but the print version is lacking. I want to take the reports and create visually appealing "printable" pages that contain our branding.
I have found three solutions so far.
#Media Print Stylesheets
This is the easiest method, but does not give me complete layout control. I want landscape mode and need to control where the page breaks occur so this method has been eliminated from my list of possible solutions. The reports are built by looping through PHP data, so while I can always put a page break after a or for example, I can't stop the page from breaking before it gets to the next set of data.
TCPDF/FPDF
From what I have seen these classes will give me all of the control I need to customer a PDF. The challenge is that this appears to be a little more advanced than my programming skills require, and all of the inline CSS contained within the HTML tables may throw off formatting.
FDF
I am leaning towards this method if I understand it correctly. First I would create a PDF form and define all of the fields to be populated by the MySQL data. Then I would create a FDF file that would populate the form template with the data from the database. It seems easier to me to create a visually pleasing form via PDF and then populate that form using this method, rather than create the entire pdf from scratch using method 2.
Does it sound like I am on the right track? Are any of these methods "easier" than the other?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
TCPDF has the most control of each page which is what I am looking for. It is extremely sensitive when writing HTML, but that is the only downside I have found so far.
There's this excellent answer on SO already.
If you're looking for easy, my money is on mPDF. I found it to be the easiest, and essentially an out-of-the-box solution (often zero server configuration to do).
I think you should try out wkhtmltopdf.
https://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/
As for the TCPDF/FPDF pagination issue, you can see this other question for the solution provided and use the flow in it to sort yours out.
TCPDF / FPDF - Page break issue
Just found this other solution as well and think you'll need it
Convert HTML + CSS to PDF with PHP?
For me personally, FPDF works great to fetch data from my database, insert into the FPDF class and dynamically create PDF's for customers.
I see some people want to write HTML/CSS to create PDF's but you will always have
differences as the browser parses the HTML/CSS differently than when using it in PDF's.
When using FPDF's built-in method's, I have been able to get exactly what I wanted
and haven't seen any issues (yet).
I want to display Html page generated using PHP and CSS directly as a pdf.
I have searched a lot for this but endup with lot of libraries to do these task. But I don't want to use any libraries and just want to render it as PDF by defining header tag.
I am not sure but, have little in memory it is possible without using any API, library which might be wrong so want to confirm before proceeding to another solution.
Hope there might be the simple way to do this, as this is the most required feature for most of product.
First of all, I'd recommend using a library for this because although it "might be wrong", it's probably more correct than what you or I would come up with. Second, (most of) this isn't done using headers ;)
If you REALLY want to do it yourself, the native PDF functions in PHP are found here, which libraries like FPDF (my personal favorite) use directly in their implementations.
To print a page to PDF, you'll have to render it first (create the HTML DOM and apply the CSS) which PHP does not do. You'll have to render the page first with an HTML engine like WebKit, and then return to PHP for the print operation.
Again, this should probably be done using a library, saving you headaches and debugging. Of course, this question has been asked before so there's plenty of info available.
But if you want to have a go yourself, that's the path you must walk (or crawl). Me, I'd take the bus.
UPDATE
To answer your question in the comments:
<?php header("Content-type: application/pdf;charset=UTF-8"); ?>
Putting this on the top of the page render the pdf but it's not
working generated in this way. So, can you suggest any thing for this.
That header is for an HTTP request. When the request is returned from the server, it sends a header suggesting what type of content is being returned (JSON, an image, a pdf, whatever).
In other words, that header doesn't actually make a PDF, it just tells the browser to expect a PDF. After the header, the server then sends something (hopefully, a PDF).
That's why I said your original question isn't done using headers.
I have seen a lot of questions regarding PDF's forms filled from a Website by using several PDF libraries but I can't find an straight answer to my concern. I have a very complex PDF that somebody built with LiveCycle, which includes things like buttons for dynamic addition of rows in tables.
I wonder if it is possible to fill this form from a Website's form or a DDBB, and if there is any library that can achieve things like adding the extra rows to the table and/or to peep inside the internal PDF's javascript to understand it's logic.
Adobe LiveCycle is not even an option, as their server solutions' prices, are far out of the mortals' reach.
Can anybody point me to the right direction?
It's possible if you hand write a parser (which is quite a feat..) but it's extremely difficult. It would probably be easiest to simply generate a new pdf with the needed information stored as static text.
After some experiments I have found that the only thing you need is to modify the XFA lines inside the XDP file which is contained inside the PDF (when it is a LiveCycle generated one) and everything will work.
An explanation can be found in here:
How can I merge data into an XDP file and return a PDF (via .NET)?
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.