Generate PDF report with PHP

Question

I’m using the TCPDF stop generating a PDF report,:

• The page that generates the HTML that will be transformed into PDF receives as parameters some POSTS (which will be used to fill the report)

• TCPDF only accepts the HTML already processed, that is, already filled.

Does anyone know any way to process the page, take the HTML, and put it in the TCPDF function, without the html appearing to the user?

Answer 1

You can generate HTML within a variable and then use tcpdf to generate the pdf.

Using the example of tcppdf.org to insert a sentence at the beginning of the html that came from $_POST['phrase']:

<?php
//============================================================+
// File name   : example_001.php
// Begin       : 2008-03-04
// Last Update : 2013-05-14
//
// Description : Example 001 for TCPDF class
//               Default Header and Footer
//
// Author: Nicola Asuni
//
// (c) Copyright:
//               Nicola Asuni
//               Tecnick.com LTD
//               www.tecnick.com
//               [email protected]
//============================================================+

/**
 * Creates an example PDF TEST document using TCPDF
 * @package com.tecnick.tcpdf
 * @abstract TCPDF - Example: Default Header and Footer
 * @author Nicola Asuni
 * @since 2008-03-04
 */

// Include the main TCPDF library (search for installation path).
require_once('tcpdf_include.php');

// create new PDF document
$pdf = new TCPDF(PDF_PAGE_ORIENTATION, PDF_UNIT, PDF_PAGE_FORMAT, true, 'UTF-8', false);

// set document information
$pdf->SetCreator(PDF_CREATOR);
$pdf->SetAuthor('Nicola Asuni');
$pdf->SetTitle('TCPDF Example 001');
$pdf->SetSubject('TCPDF Tutorial');
$pdf->SetKeywords('TCPDF, PDF, example, test, guide');

// set default header data
$pdf->SetHeaderData(PDF_HEADER_LOGO, PDF_HEADER_LOGO_WIDTH, PDF_HEADER_TITLE.' 001', PDF_HEADER_STRING, array(0,64,255), array(0,64,128));
$pdf->setFooterData(array(0,64,0), array(0,64,128));

// set header and footer fonts
$pdf->setHeaderFont(Array(PDF_FONT_NAME_MAIN, '', PDF_FONT_SIZE_MAIN));
$pdf->setFooterFont(Array(PDF_FONT_NAME_DATA, '', PDF_FONT_SIZE_DATA));

// set default monospaced font
$pdf->SetDefaultMonospacedFont(PDF_FONT_MONOSPACED);

// set margins
$pdf->SetMargins(PDF_MARGIN_LEFT, PDF_MARGIN_TOP, PDF_MARGIN_RIGHT);
$pdf->SetHeaderMargin(PDF_MARGIN_HEADER);
$pdf->SetFooterMargin(PDF_MARGIN_FOOTER);

// set auto page breaks
$pdf->SetAutoPageBreak(TRUE, PDF_MARGIN_BOTTOM);

// set image scale factor
$pdf->setImageScale(PDF_IMAGE_SCALE_RATIO);

// set some language-dependent strings (optional)
if (@file_exists(dirname(__FILE__).'/lang/eng.php')) {
    require_once(dirname(__FILE__).'/lang/eng.php');
    $pdf->setLanguageArray($l);
}

// ---------------------------------------------------------

// set default font subsetting mode
$pdf->setFontSubsetting(true);

// Set font
// dejavusans is a UTF-8 Unicode font, if you only need to
// print standard ASCII chars, you can use core fonts like
// helvetica or times to reduce file size.
$pdf->SetFont('dejavusans', '', 14, '', true);

// Add a page
// This method has several options, check the source code documentation for more information.
$pdf->AddPage();

// set text shadow effect
$pdf->setTextShadow(array('enabled'=>true, 'depth_w'=>0.2, 'depth_h'=>0.2, 'color'=>array(196,196,196), 'opacity'=>1, 'blend_mode'=>'Normal'));

// Set some content to print

Here you enter the $_POST. Attention to the different EOT delimiter from the original example

$frase = $_POST['frase'];

$html = <<<EOT
<p>$frase</p>
<h1>Welcome to <a href="http://www.tcpdf.org" style="text-decoration:none;background-color:#CC0000;color:black;">&nbsp;<span style="color:black;">TC</span><span style="color:white;">PDF</span>&nbsp;</a>!</h1>
<i>This is the first example of TCPDF library.</i>
<p>This text is printed using the <i>writeHTMLCell()</i> method but you can also use: <i>Multicell(), writeHTML(), Write(), Cell() and Text()</i>.</p>
<p>Please check the source code documentation and other examples for further information.</p>
<p style="color:#CC0000;">TO IMPROVE AND EXPAND TCPDF I NEED YOUR SUPPORT, PLEASE <a href="http://sourceforge.net/donate/index.php?group_id=128076">MAKE A DONATION!</a></p>
EOT;

And keep mounting the file normally...

// Print text using writeHTMLCell()
$pdf->writeHTMLCell(0, 0, '', '', $html, 0, 1, 0, true, '', true);

// ---------------------------------------------------------

// Close and output PDF document
// This method has several options, check the source code documentation for more information.
$pdf->Output('example_001.pdf', 'I');

//============================================================+
// END OF FILE
//============================================================+

Another option, if you do not want to use heredoc (EOT) may be to include the phrase before:

$html = $frase;
$html .=<<<EOD ...

I didn’t test the code, so if you have any mistakes let me know and I’ll take a look.

Answer 2

A suggestion would be to use a report library, which generates outputs such as PDF, CSV, World, Excel, etc... All from an HTML

I created this: https://github.com/umbrellaTech/simpletablereport

Documentation still needs to be created, but if you look at the tests you will know how to use it :)