Using php to generate PDF documents_PHP tutorial

Using PHP to generate PDF documents

PHP bundled with the PDFLIB library may be the best web publishing platform. A pair of typical usages:

Requirement Booklet
E-commerce Invoice

Through this guide, you can learn how to use the PDF extension in PHP Tutorial 4 to create PDF documents.
We also focus on creating PDF documents using mysql tutorial data.

Summary of content


Install PDFLib 3.0.1 and PHP4.01pl2 with PDF support (Annotation: You can install the latest php4.03pl1)

Extract PDF Documentation
(I assume you have some experience configuring PHP)



Install PDFLib and PHP with PDF support.

Requirements:

PHP 4.02+ Download from http://php.net
PDFLib 3.0.1 Download from http://www.pdflib.com

This is a little secret recipe on how to make PDFLib3.0.1 and php4 work together: (foreigners are very humorous^_^)

Download ext/pdf/pdf.c directly from http://www.php.net Patches to support PDFLib v 3.0.1

Download PDFLib 3.0.1 from here http://www.pdflib.com
Applicable patches you can find here http://www.pdflib.com /pdflib/patches.html

Configure, Make and Install PDFLib

#./configure --enabled-shared-pdflib
#make
#make install
you Will cause PDFLib to be installed in /usr/local/lib.


Configure PHP
#./configure --with-apxs=/usr/bin/apxs
--with-gd --with-pdflib=/usr/local --with-mysql=/usr/local
--with-config-file-path=/etc/httpd --with-zlib-dir=/usr
--with-ttf=/usr/local/include
--with-jpeg-dir=/usr --with-tiff-dir=/usr
--with-system-regex=yes --enable -debug=no

#make
#make install



Update system library
Insert /usr/local/lib into /etc/ld.so .conf (file)

#/sbin/ldconfig



Test and Verify
Now you need to restart apache
#apachectl restart


Copy pdfclock.php to the httpd directory (that is, the web directory)...test...everything is normal.

Important information

To make PHPLIb work with fonts you must pay attention to the UPR section in the PDFLib manual.
The simplest way to use fonts with PDFLib is to copy the standard UPR description file (fonts/pdflib.upr) in the PDFlib tar package to your working directory.

Extract PDF documents
Now we are ready to generate PDF documents like Enclave!


In this small example we want to generate FLYStore company’s requirements brochure ,extracting data from the catalog database tutorial of course.




Prepare the database
I assume you have some database experience, at a minimum, I really just hope you know how to create a database and insert tables into it.
Create table catalog:

create table catalog(
id smallint(8) unsigned DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
item varchar(100) DEFAULT '' NOT NULL,
description tinytext,
img_data longblob,
imgname varchar(60),
imgsize varchar(60),
imgtype varchar(60),
price smallint(8) unsigned DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (id),
KEY item (item(20))
);



Send MIME header information
in order to allow our To display correctly, we need to send the correct header information to the user's browser.
In PHP we can use the header function to achieve this. The code below sends the correct MIME type to the browser.

header( "Content-type: application/pdf" );
header( "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=modulo.pdf" );
header( "Content-Description: PHP3 Generated Data" );



Important information
What you must know is that you cannot output anything before sending the header information. A common mistake is having spaces at the beginning of the file.


Get data from mysql

Here we use a simple code snippet to extract data from directory data.

$link = mysql_connect ("127.0.0.1", "flyadm", "flystore")
or die ("Could not connect");

mysql_select_db ("flystore", $link);

$result = mysql_query ("SELECT * FROM catalog", $link)
or die ("Invalid query");

$data = mysql_fetch_row ($result);
....
....
mysql_close ($link);


?>


Generate PDF file

In order to generate a PDF document, we need to go through the following steps:


Open a PDF stream and associate it with a handle:
$ pdf = PDF_open();

(Optional) Set document information like Author, Title, Subject, etc
(Optional) Set document information like author, title, subject, etc.

Start a new page (PDF files can use different layouts to generate different pages, such as portrait, foreground...):
PDF_begin_page($pdf, 595, 842);
(optional) settings A hyperlink:
PDF_add_outline($pdf, "Item ".$data[1]);

Select font type, size (pdf_set_font($pdf, "Helvetica-Bold" , 20, winansi);) Presentation mode

Insert text at X.y position:
PDF_show_xy($pdf, "Item : " . $data[1], 100, 700);

or insert image at X.Y position:
pdf_place_image($pdf, $im, 100, 300, 3);

Refresh text buffer and close the PDF stream.
PDF Coordinate Systems
What we need to do to locate a string or picture in some part of the PDF page,
In many places of the PDF page we need to locate strings and pictures, convert imperial units to DTP Point value.

is written on page 45 of the PDFLIB manual:



"... The origin of the default coordinate system is at the lower left corner of the page, using the DTP point As units:
1 pt = 1 inch /72 = 25.4mm /72 = 0.3528 mm
"


Here is the code snippet to generate the PDF file:

$pdf = PDF_open();
pdf_set_info_author($pdf, "Luca Perugini");
PDF_set_info_title($pdf, "Brochure for FlyStore");
pdf_set_info_creator($pdf, "See Author");
pdf_set_info_subject($pdf, "FlyStore");
PDF_begin_page($pdf, 595, 842);
PDF_add_outline($pdf, "Item ".$data[1]) ;
pdf_set_font($pdf, "Helvetica-Bold" , 20, winansi);
pdf_set_text_rendering($pdf, 0);
pdf_show_xy($pdf, "FlyStore Catalog 2000",50,780);

PDF_show_xy($pdf, "Item : " .$data[1], 100, 700);

PDF_show_xy($pdf, "Description : " .$data[2], 100, 620 );

$im = PDF_open_jpeg($pdf, "pass4_sml.jpg");
pdf_place_image($pdf, $im, 100, 300, 3);
pdf_close_image ($im);

pdf_stroke($pdf);
PDF_end_page($pdf);
PDF_close($pdf);


?>