Generate PDFs with PHPThis article was written in 2. If you’re keen to learn more about PDFs and documents, you may find this recent article on creating an HTML5 document editor of great interest. Ahead Of The Game. One of the reasons I like PHP so much is its consistent support for new technologies. The language invites extensibility, making it easy for developers to add new modules to the core engine, and widespread community support has made PHP one of the most full- featured Web programming languages around, with support for a wide variety of modular extensions. Extensions available today allow developers to use PHP to perform IMAP and POP3 operations; dynamically construct images and Shockwave Flash movies; perform credit card validation; encrypt sensitive data; and parse XML- encoded data.
CakePHP Documentation. This will generate all the documentation in an HTML form. Cakephp generate PDF download.What is CakePHP According to the official. Helper classes help generate HTML and JavaScript code.
This isn’t all, though. One of the more interesting items currently being bundled with PHP is the PDFLib extension, which allows developers to dynamically generate documents in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Over the next few pages, I’m going to take a quick look at this module, providing you with a brief overview of its functions and demonstrating how you can use it in your PHP development. So come on in, and let’s get going! Getting Started. In order to use PHP’s PDF manipulation capabilities, you need to have the PDFLib library installed on your system. If you’re working on Linux, you can download a copy from http: //www.
If you’re running Windows, your job is even simpler – a pre- built PDF library is bundled with your distribution, and all you need to do is activate it by uncommenting the appropriate lines in your PHP configuration file. Additionally, you’ll need a copy of the (free!) Adobe Acrobat PDF reader, so that you can view the documents created via the PDFLib library. You can download a copy of this reader from http: //www. Once you’ve got everything in place, it’s time to create a simple PDF file. Here goes: < ?
PDF document $pdf = pdf. PHP will execute the script, and a new PDF file will be created and stored in the location specified at the top of the script. Here’s what you’ll see when you open the file: Anatomy Lesson. Let’s take a closer look at the code used in the example above. Creating a PDF file in PHP involves four basic steps: creating a handle for the document; registering fonts and colours for the document; writing or drawing to the handle with various pre- defined functions; and saving the final document. Let’s take the first step .
This handle is then used in all subsequent operations involving the PDF document. Next up, you need to give the PDF file a name – this is accomplished via the pdf. In case math isn’t your strong suit, the PHP manual provides width and height measurements for most standard page sizes, including A4, the one used in the example above. In between the calls to pdf.
In this case, all I’m doing is writing a line of text to the document – so all I need to do is pick a font, and then use that font to write the text string I need to the document. Selecting and registering a font is accomplished via the pdf. These coordinates are specified with respect to the origin (0,0), which is located at the bottom left corner of the document. Once the text has been written, the page is closed via a call to pdf.
You can then add one or more extra pages, or – as I’ve done here – simply close the document via pdf. This will save the document contents to the file specified in the initial call to pdf. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, consider this next example, which demonstrates the process of adding an image to your newly- minted PDF document.< ? PDF document $pdf = pdf. The first one accepts an image type – GIF, JPEG, TIFF or PNG – and file name as arguments, and returns an image handle, which may then be re- used multiple times in the document. The image handle returned in the previous step can be used by the pdf. The coordinates provided to this function (the second and third arguments) refer to the position of the lower left corner of the image, while the fourth argument specifies the scaling factor to use when displaying the image (a scaling factor of 1 will show the image at actual size, while a factor of 0.
Selection from CakePHP 2 Application Cookbook . FPDF is a PHP class which allows to generate PDF files with pure PHP. FPDF has other advantages: high level functions. Here is a list of its main. CakePHP The Rapid Development PHP Framework. CakePHP was created by Michal Tatarynowicz On April 15. Helps generate non-HTML files such as PDFs, RSS feeds, etc.
The Shortest Distance Between Two Points. Why stop there? PHP’s PDF extension comes with a whole bag of functions designed to let you draw lines, circles and other shapes in your PDF document. Consider the following example, which demonstrates the process of drawing a line.< ?
PDF document $pdf = pdf. In order to do this, I first need to place the cursor at the starting point (2. So, if I wanted to set red (RGB: 2. Take a look at the following example, which demonstrates.< ? PDF document $pdf = pdf. This rectangle has then been filled and outlined in two different colours, via the pdf. Consider the following one, in which a couple of “for” loops have been combined with the pdf.
The following example demonstrates: < ? PDF document $pdf = pdf. The following example demonstrates how PHP can accept numeric data and turn it into a graph – specifically, a multi- coloured pie chart. The form below asks for a series of data “slices”, in the form of numeric data, separated by commas.
Once you’ve entered a few numbers, the “pie. PDF document containing a pie chart, marking out the different pie slices and filling them with different colours.< html>. Pie Chart Generator< /h. A loop then converts these numbers into degrees of a circle, and draws arcs for each slice. In each iteration of the loop, the coordinate of the end point of the arc is also calculated and a line segment in drawn to demarcate the arc from the rest of the circle.
Once the pie segment has been drawn, the pdf. And while you’re enjoying yourself, I’ll bid you adieu. Examples are illustrative only, and are not meant for a production environment. Melonfire provides no warranties or support for the source code described in this article.
YMMV! Copyright Melonfire, 2. All rights reserved.
If you enjoyed reading this post, you’ll love Learnable; the place to learn fresh skills and techniques from the masters. Members get instant access to all of Site. Point’s ebooks and interactive online courses, like The Beginner’s Guide to Web Design with Word.