Printer friendly pages with SSL (https)

qt-php

For my customers websites I usually offer a printer-friendly function.
What I do is sending the file to a print-PHP where I fopen/fread the printable content which I declare with HTML-comments (like ).
This works on various webservers just fine (over http).
At the moment, I work for a client, that uses SSL (over https). And here, my script doesn't work. The error message says, that the file (which I want to print) cannot be opened or does not exist. When I switch back to http, the same script with the same file, which I want to be printed, displays correctly without error messages.

I already asked the serveradmin, but he didn't have an answer to the problem. So I checked all PHP-Forums and the php.net Website for answers, but without success.

I'm sure that the problem is either the fread or fopen function.

Does anybody have a solution?

Thanks to all responds....

sglane

I've never done this before, but just so you know, all the data coming from a https server is encrypted with SSL which can be decrypted with the appropriate PHP functions. The SSL support has to be compiled into PHP, though. Functions you'll probably use:
openssl_verify
openssl_x509_parse
openssl_x509_read
openssl_x509_free

http://us3.php.net/manual/en/ref.openssl.php

Hope this helps.

qt-php

Hi sglane

Thanx a lot!!

I'll try that!

Cheers

leatherback

Stupid question perhaps, but eeehh.. Why don't you just use CSS to create the printer friendly version?

Just make sure certain classes are only visible on screen, and everything is printed in printable-colors, page-size etc?

Check media-types in css declarations

qt-php

Hi leatherback

Additionally to my printer-CSS definitions,
I want to open a seperate file, where users can see the actual printlayout in their webbrowser.
Most users are not aware, that current browsers support printer previews already.
And there are users out there that only want to see the content without navigation, pics etc.

That's why....

But thanks anyway.

...
Still, I don't have a solution for my problem...

Greets

leatherback

Hey qt-php,

even then.. same story.. create a css file which will only show the content you want to be printed. Then you add a var: ...?action=print, and check for that: if $_POST[action] == print
{
<stylesheet = pintsheet.css
}
else
{
<styesheet = displaysheet>
}
Big advantage.. Saves you a lot of coding on the long run. Adapt your stylesheet once, and the whole site can be printed differently..

Just a thought? Or I might be missing something here.

Use css of layout & formatting, where possible. That is what it was made for..

rpanning

We do have a article request for "printer friendly" pages. There are several ways to do this as posted there. Take a look here, maybe it'll help. 🙂 http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10225704