| How
to create PDF documents dynamically using PHP |
| |
| Introduction |
|
The PDF (Portable Document
Format) file is a widely used file format originally
developed by Adobe. This format is rapidly becoming the defacto standard
for publishing on the web. Many companies uses the PDF format to overcome
their Reports, Contracts, Manuals, Billings and other documents over the
Intranet. The main reason for this is the file look the same on the screen
and in the printer and it is highly compressed, allows complex information
to be downloaded efficiently.
PDF Files not only produce high quality screen viewing,
conveniently and quickly wide information including text, tables, links
and graphics and allows the reliable reproduction of published material
on many different platforms.
|
| |
| Advantages
of Creating PDF dynamically |
|
Creating PDF dynamically provides many features because
of its reliability and ease of usability. Most of the web developers creates
dynamic PDF in purpose of reusability, ease of maintenance and most importantly
to get live data whenever the web users needs it. Server side generation
is typically the result of a Client side request from a web page or any
Client application, to get their needed document on fly. Meanwhile good
coding for generating PDF also provides high security control of the file
and also getting the PDF downloadable without storing in the server. The
documents can be easily secured with password protection and 128-bit encryption.
Anyone from anywhere can open the PDF file at anytime to get their on
time information, only thing is that they need Acrobat Reader Software.
More organizations uses Script for getting any processing
PDF form documents from the Sever and filling the information in the Form
perfectly and provide easy way of print out or as PDF File to the user.
An organization can take online information as a report from the user
from their forms.
"What has to come more than these high features...
from creating a dynamic PDF document on fly."
|
| |
| Components,
Tools or Add-Ins for document Creation |
|
To generate PDF documents on the fly, PDFLib is one
of the best component that allows the user to create PDF file within the
server or on the Client-side software. PDFLib is available for all major
operating environments and development environments. Easy functions and
methods from PDFLib is very useful for the developers to code the Script
in easy and quick way.
There also COM Components like DynamicPDF generator,
DynamicPDF ReportWriter and few add-ins like ActivePDF toolkit to create
a PDF documents on fly. ActivePDF has more advance feature like converting
from Word Document to PDF.
|
| |
| Creating
PDF Files Using PDFLIB |
| Thomas
Merz's PDFLib is used to Create PDF Files in PHP. There are about 100 different
wealthy and easy functions that allows to control(Create/Modify) PDF files.
Here in this article we can see about basic fundamentals of creating PDF
files dynamically using PDFLib.
Various functions in the PDFLib are:
- General Functions.
- Font Functions.
- Text Output Functions.
- Graphics Functions.
- Color Functions.
- Image Functions.
- PDF Import(PDI) Functions.
- Block Filling Functions.
- Hypertext Functions.
These are very various Functions that has been used
to create a PDF File.
The 8 steps to create a basic PDF file using PDFLib
Functions are:
|
| |
| Creating/Opening
the PDF File |
Using PDFLib functions, the PDF files can be either
created or opened within PHP. The function used for creating new PDF file
is PDF_new(), and to create new PDF Document or modify
PDF File PDF_open_file()
has been used.
The basic
syntax for these functions are:
$objPDF
= PDF_new();
int PDF_open_file($objPDF,
$fileName);
$objPDF
represents the variable to store the PDF object reference. $fileName
represents the file name of the PDF that has to be open.
Let us see with an
example of creating new PDF file without giving the file name. |
| |
$objPdf
= PDF_new();
PDF_open_file($bjPDF);
?> |
|
| |
| Setting
Document information for the PDF File. |
The next step is to Fill the document information for
the PDF File like author, title, creator, subject. PDF_set_info()
function is used to fill the documentation information.
The basic syntax for this function is
PDF_set_info($objPDF,$property,$value);
Here $property
represents the property like title,author,subject etc., and $value
represents the corresponding value for the property.
Eg:-
|
| |
PDF_set_info($objPDF,
"author", "AllquickFix");
PDF_set_info($objPDF,
"title", "AllquickFix
Articles Example");
PDF_set_info($objPDF,
"creator", "www.allquickfix.com");
PDF_set_info($objPDF,
"subject", "How
to create PDF Documents dynamically"); |
|
| |
| Setting
various common values for PDF File. |
Now
the next important step for a good programming is to set the various common
values for the PDF File. The common variables are like Font Name, Font
Size, Page Height, Page Width. This is good to declare them before going
for the page creation. If needed the line indent values can also be set
because the creation of PDF is graphical creating for which the each line
has to be moved by changing the Y values and each letter in a sentence
moved by changing X values. So its good to keep a constant value for line
indent to get a good result of PDF.
Eg:-
|
| |
$width
= 595;
$height = 842;
$lMargin = 10;
$rMargin = 10;
$tMargin = 5;
$bMargin = 5;
$lIdent = 4;
$font = PDF_findfont($objPDF,
"Helvetica-Bold", "winansi",0);
|
| |
| Creating
a Page for the PDF document. |
The
next step is to create a new page in the document. The function used for
it is PDF_begin_page();
The
basic syntax is given below is
PDF_begin_page($objPDF,
$width, $height);
Where
$width and $height
are width and height of the page. The table below lists common standard
page sizes. |
| |
| format |
width |
height |
format |
width |
height |
format |
width |
height |
| A0 |
2380 |
3368 |
A4 |
595 |
842 |
letter |
612 |
792 |
| A1 |
1684 |
2380 |
A5 |
421 |
595 |
legal |
612 |
1008 |
| A2 |
1190 |
1684 |
A6 |
297 |
421 |
ledger |
1224 |
792 |
| A3 |
842 |
1190 |
B5 |
501 |
709 |
11x17 |
792 |
1224 |
|
| |
| Creating
the Page content for the PDF Document. |
The
next step in the PDF creating is to doing various functionalities to bring
the contents to the page. Like to write any text from a point x,y and
more. The function used for it is PDF_show_xy(). The
basic syntax for this is,
PDF_show_xy($objPDF,$string,$x,$y);
where $x
& $y are x and y positions
respectively, $string is
your string to write.
Eg:-
PDF_show_xy($objPDF,100,200,"Hello
World! From AllquickFix"); |
| |
| Ending
the Page. |
After
finishin of creating the page content the final step in page creation
is to properly close the page. The function used for ending the page is
PDF_end_page().
In order to create a new page in the PDF document the previous page has
to be closed. So that will able to create the new fresh page for the further
contents.
Eg:-
PDF_end_page($objPDF); |
| |
| Closing
the PDF File. |
The final step
is to close the PDF document that has been created. This task is done
by calling the function PDF_close();
The basic syntax for closing the PDF document is as follows.
PDF_close($objPDF); |
| |
| Output the Buffer and
save the File. |
Finally
we need to bring this PDF content for viewing or to save it. We can use
the PDF buffer itself to bring the content for viewing. The function used
for buffering the content is PDF_get_buffer() which will retrieve the
content that have been created for the PDF document and this can be either
written to the file system using the PHP standard calls or can be directly
outputted to the browser for viewing, through the use of appropriate headers
and print statement.
To output the buffer we need to use the headers in the following format..
Content-type
: application/PDF
Content-length
: $length
Content-disposition:inline;filename:$filename
Eg:-
|
| |
$buffer
= PDF_get_buffer($objPdf);
header("Content-type:
application/pdf");
header("Content-Length:
".strlen($objPdf));
header("Content-Disposition:
inline; filename=yourfile.pdf");
echo $buffer; |
| |
| The
final step is to delete the content from the memory that is to release or
clean up memory. The function that to be used for it is PDF_delete(). |
| |
| Conclusion |
| So
far it is very clear of how to create the PDF document dynamically using
PDFlib with PHP. The various functions and steps shown here will help more
to program a good procedures to create dynamic PDF. And if you are interested
with how PHP work with PDF files and to learn more functions and advantages
for PDF document creations, we have a good consultants for dynamically creating
PDF documents and you can contact us. |
