Static HTML to PDF with PHP

ywickham

Hi,

I've been nosying around the forums, but haven't really found the answer I'm looking for on this question.

I'm looking for something that will give me the functionality of the "Web Capture" tool in Adobe Acrobat, so that I can create PDFs on-the-fly. This would be a great help in that instead of me creating PDFs for every article on the site and storing them on the server, I can setup a link that will call a PHP script to generate the link from the URL. This way, also, I only have to update the HTML page with corrections, and the PDF pages will automatically be updated as well.

I felt that I came close to finding a solution to my problem with the R&OS pdf from php class (http://ros.co.nz/pdf/), but I would still need a formatted data file for the class to read. This means I would have to parse the HTML file with Perl or something else to prep it for reading by the php class. (I've alrady emailed the developers to find out if I am misunderstanding, or if there is a solution for my problem.)

In the meantime, I'm hoping someone else has a solution to my dilema, or has some experience with that particular class and can help me reach my goal. I have quickly glanced at the pdflib, but at $500, it is really out of my price range. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance...

Yazmin

Anon

You don't need to use perl to parse the HTML file. It just takes a few lines of code to use the R&OS class. What I would do is create a template for your pages as an extension of the class. Then you just send whatever "dynamic" data you need to the template. from the page through a button or something.

ywickham

Hi Craig,

I'd love to say that I'm following you, but I'm not. I know how to create the template page, but I don't know how or where to start to make the template an extension of the class, or understand how this would help to not print other tags besides the <code><b> and <i></code> tags as regular text. (I'm not really using dynamic data, I have two files for each review that have all of the review data, HTML tags, etc..., and are currently being used in another template). This idea was actually for print pages.

If you can give me a little more guidance, I would extremely appreciate it!

Thanks!
Yazmin

Anon

I have the same problem to solve. I need to convetr online forms into pdfs on the fly, if you find the solution, please post it here.

Anon

Here is the solution:

As I understand it you want to convert current php pages to pdf with the php parsed.

This is easily done.

To get the outputed source (php parsed) you need to open the file like this:

$phppage = fopen('http://yourdomain.com/yourfile.php?name=yourname', 'r');

This will open a http stream to the file and therefore act as a browser would. THe php would be parsed and only the resulting code will be sent to the script. you can then work out the rest and turn that code into a pdf.

Please note this: if you try to open the file directly as in 'yourfile.php' you will get the actual content including the php code. It will not be parsed. Even if your file your accessing is in the same directory you must read it via a http request to simulate a browser request.

Hope this helps.