printable certificates

slava_php

i'd like my users to print their certificates of test completion. what's a good way of doing this and of course prevent certificate forgery...

i was thinking of using pdflib and psp to generate certificates and allow printing option only.

any suggestions / other options?

thanks in advance,
steve

the_Igel

Include an unique ID in the certificate

delamitri

This still poses a threat to forgery though, as the certificate would be generated therefore the source code could easily be copied and altered

The safest way is to generate the certificate as an image using GD and then have the details generated with it.

What about these people who only have b/w laser printers or cheapo colour printers? Not going to be very effective for them this option?

Just my 2 pence

the_Igel

Everything can be forged. As you send it to the user, text or graphic, he gains possibility to edit it, with whatever editor may be applied. If it's graphic, one may use graphic editor. It will be harder to forge, but still possible. The only solution is to store the list of certificates at your server, and make it possible for everyone to check whether this or that certificate (e.g. identified by ID, or by the owner) is genuine or forged.

slava_php

thanks for your input. everything you've mentioned is true, and i'm aware of it (generating unique cert # and storing/comparing with database). fortunately, i'm dealing with certificates that are not all that sensitive. for the most part, i'd like to prevent average joe from changing name on the certificate.

is it worth spending ~$700 for pdflib & psp

sarahk

check out the pdf code at http://www.ros.co.nz it's free and quite simple. Only problem I've found is having to convert my gif's to jpeg as it couldn't work with gif. small price to pay for a great tool