Creating PDF using PHP

Portable Document Format (PDF) is an open file format created and controlled by Adobe Systems.
PDF files are very useful for data reporting. bcoz now every system having a pdf file reader.

The PDF functions in PHP can create PDF files using the PDFlib library created by Thomas Merz.
All of the functions in PDFlib and the PHP module have identical function names and parameters.

Using HTML2PDF we can convert html page to pdf.

HTML2PDF is a simple HTML to PDF tool which can quickly and easily convert thousands of HTML pages into PDF reports.

HTML2PDF (include PDFcamp + DocConverter COM) is the easiest way to convert your web pages and DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files into PDF documents, HTML2PDF quickly and accurately transforms well-formed HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files into PDF files, the HTML2PDF supports both server and client sides, the end-user doesn't need any software (Adobe Acrobat and Reader NOT required).

HTML2PDF (include PDFcamp + DocConverter COM) offers you the flexibility and speed you need to convert multiple HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files into PDF format. Whatever the reason, pdf files can be created directly from MS Internet Explorer (or at background) and even emailed to a recipient/recipients simultaneously.

HTML2PDF Features:

* HTML2PDF can create page headers, footers and page numbers
* HTML2PDF can convert HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files to PDF files on the fly
* HTML2PDF supports adjust paper orientation and size to accommodate HTML documents
* HTML2PDF supports nested tables
* HTML2PDF supports all elements in HTML document, include asp, cgi, css, Java Applets, flash, cookie etc.
* HTML2PDF supports dynamic page breaks with headers and footers
* HTML2PDF supports convert a URL or local file to PDF file
* HTML2PDF can convert .doc/.html/.rtf/.txt/.xls etc files to PDF files from a Command Line Tool, this Tool without any user intervention
* HTML2PDF supports command line operation (for manual use or inclusion in scripts)

How convert a HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files to PDF files with DocConverter COM?

Step 1:
Please download and install the PDFcamp (PDF Writer) software,
http://www.verypdf.com/pdfcamp/pdfcamp_setup.exe

Step 2:
Please download and register the DocConverter COM software,
http://www.toppdf.com/pdfcamp/doc2pdf_com_trial.zip
Please register the pdfout.dll file in your system, for example,
~~~~~~~~~~~
regsvr32 pdfout.dll
~~~~~~~~~~~

Step 3:
Please run the html2pdf.exe software from the Command Line Window to try, the html2pdf.exe software is included in the DocConverter COM package,

For example:
html2pdf.exe "http://www.yahoo.com" "c:\yahoo.pdf"
html2pdf.exe "http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=pdf" "c:\google.pdf"
html2pdf.exe "C:\example.doc" "C:\example.pdf"
html2pdf.exe "C:\example.xls" "C:\example.pdf"

Now You have converted HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files to PDF documents.

Step 5:
Now, you can call the html2pdf.exe software from your Delphi, C++, VB, BCB etc. applications.

HTML2PDF - Converting your HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files to PDFs has never been easier! Combine several of your HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files into a single PDF file. Convert a HTML file into a PDF file, or convert ANY file format to PDF file!

But f you want a simplier method to create PDF file without doing the above installations on your server to use PDF function in your scripts, then use FPDF.

FPDF is a PHP class which allows to generate PDF files with pure PHP, that is to say without using the PDFlib library. F from FPDF stands for Free: you may use it for any kind of usage and modify it to suit your needs.

Advantages: high level functions. Here is a list of its main features:

* Choice of measure unit, page format and margins
* Page header and footer management
* Automatic page break
* Automatic line break and text justification
* Image support (JPEG and PNG)
* Colors
* Links
* TrueType, Type1 and encoding support
* Page compression

FPDF requires no extension (except zlib to activate compression) and works with PHP4 and PHP5.

What languages can I use?
The class can produce documents in many languages other than the Western European ones: Central European, Cyrillic, Greek, Baltic and Thai, provided you own TrueType or Type1 fonts with the desired character set. Chinese, Japanese and Korean are supported too.

What about performance?
Of course, the generation speed of the document is less than with PDFlib. However, the performance penalty keeps very reasonable and suits in most cases, unless your documents are particularly complex or heavy.

Here, we are going to see on converting HTML 2 PDF using PHP. we would be seeing how to use some free open source PHP scripts to accomplish this file conversion.

FPDF: The PDF Generator

The first and the main base for this file conversion is FPDF library. FPDF is a pure PHP class to generate PDF files on the fly. Let us start the PDF generation with a simple Hello world display.

PHP Code:

AddPage();
$pdf->SetFont('Arial','B',16);
$pdf->Cell(40,10,'Hello World!');
$pdf->Output();
?>

To generate a pdf file, first we need to include library file fpdf.php. Then we need to create an FPDF object using the default constructor FPDF(). This constructor can be passed three values namely page orientation (portrait or landscape), measure unit, and page size (A4, A5, etc.,). By default pages are in A4 portrait and the measure unit is millimeter. It could have been specified explicitly with:

PHP Code:
$pdf=new FPDF('P','mm','A4');

It is possible to use landscape (L), other page formats (such as Letter and Legal) and measure units (pt, cm, in).

Then we have added a page to our pdf document with AddPage(). The origin is at the upper-left corner and the current position is by default placed at 1 cm from the borders; the margins can be changed with the function SetMargins().

To print a text, we need to first select a font with SetFont(). Let us select Arial bold 16:

PHP Code:
$pdf->SetFont('Arial','B',16);

We use Cell() function to output a text. A cell is a rectangular area, possibly framed, which contains some text. It is output at the current position. We specify its dimensions, its text (centered or aligned), if borders should be drawn, and where the current position moves after it (to the right, below or to the beginning of the next line). To add a frame, we would do this:

PHP Code:
$pdf->Cell(40,10,'Hello World !',1);

Finally, the document is closed and sent to the browser with Output(). We could have saved it in a file by passing the desired file name.

There are lot more functions in FPDF.

Need more info? click here.


HTML2FPDF: The Converter

HTML2FPDF is a PHP Class library that uses the FPDF class library to convert HTML files to PDF files. This library consist of three classes namely PDF, HTML2FPDF and FPDF (modified FPDF class). The class PDF extends the class HTML2FPDF that extends the class FPDF.

Now let us see, how to convert a sample html page into a PDF file using HTML2FPDF Library. The html page contains a table that lists a few nations with their corresponding national flags. Below is the code for the conversion.

PHP Code:
AddPage();
$fp = fopen("sample.html","r");
$strContent = fread($fp, filesize("sample.html"));
fclose($fp);
$pdf->WriteHTML($strContent);
$pdf->Output("sample.pdf");
echo "PDF file is generated successfully!";
?>


First, we need to include the html2fpdf.php file that contains the HTML2FPDF class and an object is created using the constructor HTML2FPDF(). Then a new page is added to the pdf document using the function AddPage(). The html contents are read from the sample.html file using file functions. Then the html contents are written in to the pdf format using WriteHTML() function. The above sample code with the sample html file and images and the html2fpdf class libraries can be downloaded here.

The HTML2FPDF class library will be working best with the XHTML 1.0. Also the class does not support all the features available with HTML. To know the supported HTML tags and other features, Please refer HTML 2 (F)PDF Project.