Faxing a PDF

pallan

Does anyone know a way to fax a pdf file from a web page that has been dynamically generated using a PHP based web app?

Is there a way to convert the PDF into a format that could be faxed from the web page?

The server I am working with is Solaris with PHP3 currently installed.

Peer

brandonschnell

bring up man for ghostscript.

here is an example with efax, but any fax program should work. (sendfax requires a class 2.0 modem but most cheap modems still only support class 1 which efax supports)

save the pdf created with php as a file in /tmp (an example). then:

exec("/usr/bin/gs -sDEVICE=tiffg3 -dNOPAUSE -sOutputFile=tiffg3_file_name pdf_file_name
</dev/null");

exec("/usr/bin/efax -d/dev/$fax_device -x/var/lock/LCK..ttyS0 -iM0L0S11=50X3S7=120 -o1 -h"To: remote_user @ their_fax_number Page#%d Of %d" -tTremote_fax_number tiffg3_file_name");

converting to tiffg3 takes about 5 seconds and faxing takes about 90 seconds for most faxes per page (even if your modem is a 14.4 modem most are still 9600) so you may want to have the script to send the fax run in the background.

pallan

This is PERFECT!!!

Now all I have to do is find out what fax service in available to me from my server. Thanks very much for the reply.

Peer

Anon

What if i want to send an email to fax message? can i also do that using the efax? and could I know what is the syntax on how to do that? Thanks!!!!!

brandonschnell

its the same process, but i would need to know what file format your emails are in.

i basically played around with file format converters like ghostscript till i found a couple that worked for me and resulted in a file format i could fax.

for example to convert a text file try: exec("pbmtext $data > pbm_file"); then exec("pbmtog3 pbm_file > tiffg3_file") to convert to tiffg3, use the resulting file tiffg3 to send a fax using efax with the exec command i posted earlier.

Anon

The format of my emails is just in a simple text format. How can I send this via efax? what is the syntax for this? and where can i download efax? Thanks for replying!!!

pallan

Turns out we have a dedicated fax server with HylaFax(sp?) installed. All I had to do was save my generated PDF and then run the Ghostscript utility 'pdf2ps' to convert it to a postscript file that I then forwarded to the fax server with 'sendfax'. It works great and the coding turned out to be much less complicated that I thought it would be.

Now I just have to implement it into the app and enable some error checking....a prgrammer's work is never done!

Thanks for all the help

Peer

shams

sir i have seen your discussion on forum . i need help in sending fax through net, i need that there is some input fields that take input from clients. then i need to send that input data through fax number
plz help

shams

your script seems to be what i need, actually i want to give user some input fields in which he/she can give data ,then those information should come to me through fax. how this is possible ....
thanx.
plz ........help
thanx

Anon

Hi,

Did you get to completion on this? I would love to know how you made out.

Thanks,
Roger