We want to display a pdf-file on a webpage.
From what i can think of i see two possible solutions, displaying the file with some kind of pdf reader(maybe in flash?) or converting the pdf-file to html before displaying it.
How would you proceed to solve a problem like this?
Which would be the preferable method?
Well, there's always a third way: serve the PDF itself and leave the rest to the visitor.
For public websites, you can improve the user experience and reduce bandwidth overhead by embedding your PDF documents in your pages using one of the document sharing services such as:
http://www.scribd.com
http://www.docstoc.com
I should also add that scribd also has an API for uploading documents (and more).
If you absolutely need to display the PDF in the browser, you can use FlashPaper. It installs on Windows as a printer, and lets you convert any kind of document to SWF, which you embed in your HTML.
I've used it in several projects, but it's not an ideal solution. From the user standpoint, the best thing is to be able to download the PDF and read it with her favorite PDF viewer.
Try using the embed or object html tags.
http://blog.flashcolony.com/?p=244
Personally I wouldn't bother with that, and just rely on the user to have a proper pdf reader. If you go for a flash (or silverlight?) solution, you're imposing another requirement to the user to cover up the first one. On the other hand, converting PDF to HTML isn't all that easy, just look at how the output from Gmail's 'view as html' functionality looks.
As said, and as others already posted while I'm writing this I am sure, is to not bother and just let the visitor deal with having something to read pdf with ;-)
A solution not mentioned by others is to rasterize the PDF (say, via ghostscript) and serve the resulting image as PNG, JPG, etc. You have to choose the resolution (perhaps 72 dpi) and you have to understand that the document will become much less readable, especially to sensory impaired visitors.
Create a PHP file like this: I'm calling this first php file "firstfile.php"
<?php
header('Content-type: application/pdf');
$file='yourpdffile.pdf';
#readfile($file);
?>
Then create another PHP file and use iframe to get your desired PDF file. Sample code is below
<iframe src="http://localhost/Domainfolder/firstfile.php>" height="400px" width="750px">
</iframe>
This should do the trick unless you don't reference the links well. Enjoy ;)
Related
Actually I have to upload pdf files and need to read on my website as book reader like a presentation. Please show me the possible ways to achieve my goals.
Thank you
I've been using flexpaper, I use pdf2swf to convert the pdf to swf as I used the flash version but there is a javascript version too.
One possible solution would be to use scribd. You simply upload your document to their website and embed their reader on your website. This is the easiest way, and you get things like searchability. Their reader also works like Adobe's Acrobat Reader.
The downside is that you are uploading your documents onto a public website, so everyone will be able to view it. Perhaps they might have settings where you can lock your documents so that only certain people can see them.
The next solution is to roll your own. You can use turn.js. In this case, you will need to find a way to convert your PDF files to HTML files or perhaps image files. With images, your text won't be selectable, and they won't be discoverable by search engines. Again, converting PDF to HTML can also be difficult as you might lose formatting in the process.
But it is entirely up to your use case. Personally, I would go with scribd, as their platform works very well, and you won't have to worry about implementing your own system.
this is what i'm trying to do. I have a Student Result Application in
which i'll like to print out a pdf format of a specially designed
Result's Sheet..
http://www.4shared.com/photo/yg8vCjYe/results_layout.html
My question is that is it possible to send all the html, css and php
variables from the final result sheet to the pdf engine, or just
design a new page result_printout.php page and implement the
pdf engine on that page.
I'll be happy your honest opinions
thanks for you help
honestly, i haven't done this before,
but i think this should help:
http://www.rustyparts.com/pdf.php
Since you allready have the HTML I would suggest to use wkhtmltopdf. There also some wrappers for PHP. It's allways a bit tricky to get it all work in the right way, especially with pagebreaks.
But I find it usually more easy to use then all the other PHP PDF creation classes/libraries.
I have only worked with MPDF and you can pretty much send all the html, css and php variables to the pdf enginge and tell the engine to either force a download or send it to the browser where the user can either save the file or print or just view it. You can also email the generated pdf.
You can read the documentation here: http://mpdf1.com/manual/
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.
In my site i m fetching my mysql data by using PHP. I want open that data in pdf file when i click pdf print button is it possible?
First of all, if you want a high quality professional product to do that. You want Prince XML
If you are looking into some open source tool to achieve something similar. You can look into this SO question.
You could prepare static PDF form file, that just fill it in with values using PHP's FDF module.
It depends which platform are you using. This would be an easy job if you are using Groovy on grails. There are plugins which facilitate pdf reporting like the jasper-plugin.
Luis
Check out jsPDF, an open-source library for generating PDF documents using nothing but JavaScript.
You can process the data with Apache FOP after transforming it to XML. (http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/).
If your page is template based, you may create a template which produces xml output and process that. You'll have extremely well contol over the pdf construction. The tradeoff is that it is not a "plug this in and will work" solution, but I've done that and once its set up, works like charm.
I've used TCPDF in the past, it's a little kludgy but can definitely get the job done. (http://www.tecnick.com/public/code/cp_dpage.php?aiocp_dp=tcpdf)
The FPDF module in PHP is simple enough to get the data together. It is a safe option since you know what data you are passing out to the PDF engine. There are some streaming pdf options which can take in a bunch of html and then output that to pdf however they can get it quite wrong without you knowing.
I used, on Linux machines, WKHTMLTOIMAGE/WKHTMLTOPDF a number of times, on many projects. It workes like a charm, easy to use, just a script that you run.
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!