pdfable

Yii Framework Extensions

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pdfable Create PDFs from web pages with PHPWkHtmlToPdf

PDFable ¶

Documentation
Requirements
Example
Changelog

PDFable is a Yii extension to create PDFs from web pages with PHPWkHtmlToPdf.

Documentation ¶

For the documentation please have a look at the project page on github.

Requirements ¶

PHPWkHtmlToPdf depends on wkhtmltopdf. So make sure, you have a wkhtmltopdf binary installed on your system.

This extension was developed on Yii 1.1.x. But it should work on other versions, too.

Example ¶

Here's just a quick example:

<?php
class DemoController extends Controller                                                                                      
{                                                                                                                            
    public function behaviors()                                                                                              
    {                                                                                                                        
        return array(                                                                                                        
            'pdfable'=>array(                                                                                                
                'class' => 'ext.pdfable.Pdfable',                                                                            
            ),                                                                                                               
        );                                                                                                                   
    }

    public function actionPdfDemo()                                                                                          
    {                                                                                                                        
        // Render this view as PDF and display inline in the browser:                                                        
        $this->renderPdf('pdfDemo');                                                                                         
    }
}

Changelog ¶

1.0.1 ¶

Update to PHPWkHtmlToPdf 1.1.4
Include composer.json

1.0.0 ¶

Initial release

14 0

27 followers

1 794 downloads

Yii Version: 1.1

License: BSD-2-Clause

Category: Others

Tags: behavior, PDF

Developed by: Mike

Created on: Nov 16, 2012

Last updated: 11 years ago

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User Contributed Notes 34

#10700

0 0

Good idea, please format the code

It's a good idea, i've not tried yet, but it's a good idea.

Please, format the page and include an example of rendered PDF.

Is it able to rendere the entire view ? a partial view ? what yes, what no?

Add PDF tag

realtebo at Nov 16, 2012, 1:52:43 PM

#10701

0 0

Re: ...

Thanks.

What do you mean by "format the page"? I think it already is.

I'm not so sure about an example PDF file: You can render any PDF you want, so why include an example?

Basically you can create a PDF from almost everything. As long as you can get the HTML as string (e.g. from renderPartial()) you can pass it to the PDF file.

The tricky part is to tweak your CSS for PDFs. I've given some hints here.

Mike at Nov 16, 2012, 2:03:01 PM

#10702

0 0

Thanks

Ok, now page is well-formatted ... probably I've written my comment too fast... sorry

"Basically you can create a PDF from almost everything.
As long as you can get the HTML as string (e.g. from renderPartial())
you can pass it to the PDF file."

this is not clear for me.
What is 'pdfDemo' ? A view name ?
Can I pass a view name to renderPdf(); ?

Can I do renderPdf(_admin) ? I really dont' understand...

realtebo at Nov 16, 2012, 2:28:26 PM

#10703

0 0

Thanks!

Nice work Mike!

acorncom at Nov 16, 2012, 2:37:53 PM

#10704

0 0

Re:

"this is not clear for me. Can I passa a view name to renderPdf();"

Yes. renderPdf() is very similar to render(). Here's the full doc block:

<?php
/**                                                                                                                          
 * Render a single view as PDF and send it to the browser                                                                    
 *                                                                                                                           
 * @param string $view name of the view to be rendered. See CController::render.                                             
 * @param array $data view data. See CController::render.                                                                    
 * @param array $options options for this page. See 'wkhtml -H' for available page options                                   
 * @param mixed $filename if provided, a download dialog will open instead of displaying the PDF inline.                     
 */                                                                                                                          
public function renderPdf($view, $data=array(), $options=array(), $filename=null)

About the CSS:

To render a view as PDF, the class first renders the view as usual then stores this rendered view into a temporary file. This file is then passed to the wkhtmltopdf binary. It will not copy any CSS files for you. So all the CSS <link> tags in this file will not work, because usually they will point to relative URLs. So either you use absolute URLs to point to your CSS files, or you create a standalone CSS file for your PDFs.

The latter is my preferred method. I pass it as extra argument with user-style-sheet to my PDFs.

So this class is not really meant to create PDFs from any Yii page. It's more a tool that helps you to create a dedicated PDF using HTML and CSS.

Mike at Nov 16, 2012, 2:44:31 PM

#10719

0 0

Error on Windows

Thanks Make
wkhtmltopdf instant ways convert to PDF, I had installed on Windows XP but can not execute $this->_options['bin'] = '/usr/bin/wkhtmltopdf'; i try change path to : 'C:\Program Files\wkhtmltopdf'; but stil got same error, anyone give a solution about this?

Finzaiko at Nov 19, 2012, 8:19:16 AM

#10720

0 0

Re: Error on Windows

I don't use wkhtmltopdf on windows, so can't really help much. But you can try to disable the enableEscaping feature and surround your bin path in additional double quotes.

Something like this:

<?php
array(
    'bin' =>'"C:\...."',
    'enableEscaping' => false,
)

Also read the note for windows users in the PHPWkHtmlToPdf docs and this issue here.

Mike at Nov 19, 2012, 8:27:24 AM

#10729

0 0

pdf-page blank

When I try out the demo and click on "single page pdf" for example, all I get is a blank screen, not even a border of the pdf. Does that mean I don't have PHPWkHtmlToPdf installed correctly?

gevalia at Nov 19, 2012, 7:30:20 PM

#10732

0 0

Re: pdf-page blank

Sorry, you need wkhtmltopdf installed on your system. I've updated the description to make this more clear.

Mike at Nov 20, 2012, 8:10:29 AM

#11407

0 0

blank page

Hi!

I can't get it to work. I follow the installation instructions, wkhtmltopdf is correctly installed on my Ubuntu workstation.

On the demo page, when I click the "Download" link, I get a empty blank page (nothing is returned).
Same when I use it in one of my actions :

public function actionEdit($id)
	{
		$this->layout = 'application.views.layouts.pdf';

		$this->renderPdf('edit', array('model'=>$this->loadModel($id)));
	}

Thanks for your help.

fleuryc at Jan 11, 2013, 4:14:46 PM

#11441

0 0

Re: blank page

If you try the advanced example, you can fetch the command line sent to wkthtmltopdf with $pdf->getCommand(). What happens if you echo this command right before sendPdf() is called and call that command manually on the command line?

Mike at Jan 14, 2013, 12:12:39 PM

#11445

0 0

Re: Re: blank page

@Mike:

the command is :
~~~
[sh]
'/usr/bin/wkhtmltopdf' --no-outline --encoding 'UTF-8' --margin-top '0' --margin-right '0' --margin-bottom '0' --margin-left '0' /home/cfleury/www-dev/vdg_efr/protected/runtime/tmp_WkHtmlToPdf_qt2ZSZ.html --user-style-sheet '/home/cfleury/www-dev/vdg_efr/protected/extensions/pdfable/pdfable/assets/css/pdf.css' /home/cfleury/www-dev/vdg_efr/protected/runtime/tmp_WkHtmlToPdf_2T2A5u.html --user-style-sheet '/home/cfleury/www-dev/vdg_efr/protected/extensions/pdfable/pdfable/assets/css/pdf.css' /home/cfleury/www-dev/vdg_efr/protected/runtime/tmp_WkHtmlToPdf_sbghi0.html --user-style-sheet '/home/cfleury/www-dev/vdg_efr/protected/extensions/pdfable/pdfable/assets/css/pdf.css' multi.pdf
~~~
and the result (executed via CLI) :
~~~
[sh]
Unknown long argument --no-outline

Name:
wkhtmltopdf 0.9.9

...
~~~

If I remove the --no-outline option, I get this error:
~~~
[sh]
Error: This version of wkhtmltopdf is build against an unpatched version of QT, and does not support more then one input document.
~~~

Thaks for your help!

fleuryc at Jan 14, 2013, 2:22:28 PM

#11446

0 0

Re: Re: Re: blank page

Unfortunately, the wkhtmltopdf version which is shipped by some distros (i only know about Ubuntu, but it's probably the same for others), does not use the patched version of the Qt library.

The solution is, to install the statically linked binary version for wkhtmltopdf. You can download it for your architecture on it's Google code page. I can not really help you much, how to do it, but this information here should hopefully help you out:

http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/wiki/static

Mike at Jan 14, 2013, 2:36:23 PM

#11447

0 0

Static wkthmltopdf

Forgot to post the link to the download page:

http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/wiki/static

Mike at Jan 14, 2013, 2:39:06 PM

#11449

0 0

Re : Static wkthmltopdf

Arrgh!

Allright, thanks for your help!

fleuryc at Jan 14, 2013, 3:01:28 PM

#11450

0 0

Re: Re: Re: blank page

Dammit! The 'bin' parameter won't get overridden...

EDIT : OK, gottit : need to be configured in the behavior() part of the controller. The config.php bin parameter doesn't seem to be useful, is it?

EDIT2 : OK, gottit² : the config.pgp pdfable module is just for the demo. To actually be able to use the extension, you must attach the behavior to the controller.

Dumb me...

fleuryc at Jan 14, 2013, 3:22:06 PM

#11637

1 0

Windows version of wkhtmlToPdf does not support user-style-sheet

Hello,

Thanks for your work.
I am just implenting it right now.

When rendering, I am also experiencing the problem with windows + the user-style-sheet option from wkhtmltopdf mentionned here :
http://mikehaertl.github.com/phpwkhtmltopdf/

For now I'll use inline CSS.

hoplayann at Jan 24, 2013, 11:31:21 AM

#11661

1 1

Additional method to setPdfOptions

Hey Mike,

here is a suggestion to add to the Pdfable behavior, in order to set options after the behavior was attached to the Controller.

/**
 * Sets options/values to the existing $_options array. 
 * 
 * - A wkthmltopdf option with value is simple overwritting or adding key=>value to the options array.
 * 
 * - For a wkthmltopdf option without argument, we store it as a (int)key => option name, 
 * by simple setting the $value parameter to true or false. 
 * Example: 
 * $this->setPdfOption('header-line', true); gives $this->_options[0] = 'header-line';
 * 
 * @param string $option for wkhtmltopdf. See 'wkthmltopdf -H'.
 * @param string $value of option for wkhtmltopdf. See 'wkthmltopdf -H'.
 */
public function setPdfOption($option, $value) {
	if ($value === true OR $value === false) {
		if (in_array($option, $this->_options) AND $value === false) {
			foreach ($this->_options as $index => &$optionLabel) {
				if ($optionLabel === $option) {
					// key is found, unset the entry
					unset($this->_options[$index]);
				}
			}
		} else if (!in_array($option, $this->_options) AND $value) {
			// add to array
			$this->_options[] = $option;
		}
	} else {
		$this->_options[$option] = $value;
	}
}

What do you think about it ?

Cheers,

Yann

hoplayann at Jan 25, 2013, 1:43:34 PM

#11673

1 0

Re: Additional method to setPdfOptions

Can you give an example, where this would be useful? You actually already have many ways to supply options for your PDF, so i can't really think of a situation where it would be neccessary to set some single global options.

Mike at Jan 26, 2013, 9:39:29 AM

#11674

0 0

Re: Additional method to setPdfOptions

Hey Mike,

Thanks for your comment,
Well in my case I have a set of options that I always want to load, and I do it in the behaviors() of the controller when attaching pdfable.
But later on, in my controller action, I want to specify additional options depending on the (post) data I am handling.

hoplayann at Jan 26, 2013, 9:51:33 AM

#11712

1 0

Re: Additional method to setPdfOptions

But you already can override options when you render a page. Look at the signatures of renderPdf() or the advanced renderPage():

<?php
public function renderPdf($view, $data=array(), $options=array(), $filename=null)
public function renderPage($view, $data=array(), $options=array())

You can override also single options there. They will be merged with the options you configured in the behavior.

I also recommend to have a look at the sources to find out about all other possible arguments.

Mike at Jan 29, 2013, 8:09:40 AM

#11815

0 1

Options in incorrect location

Hi!

I just created a issue, becaus I get an error when setting page options :

$pdf = $this->createPdf();
$pdf->renderPage('foo', array('model'=>$model), array('orientation'=>'Landscape'));
$pdf->send();

--orientation specified in incorrect location

https://github.com/mikehaertl/pdfable/issues/2

Cheers!

fleuryc at Feb 5, 2013, 4:51:01 PM

#12522

0 0

Blank page

I have installed the extension and am running into problems with the demo. I seem to be having similar problems to what report fleuryc ran into. When I try to export the PDF from the demo site, I get a blank page.

I tried installing the stand alone wkhtmltopdf v. 10.0 rc2 (there was a bug in v 11 that prevented it from running) but the standalone didn't seem to help. When I run wkhtmltopdf from the command line in RedHat, it works without a problem.

I did as advised to fleuryc and output the command of the multipage pdf and ran that in my RedHat server and got the following error:

Loading pages (1/6)
Error: Failed loading page http:///var/www/ ... /tmp_WkHtmlToPdf_9RbV2Q.html (sometimes it will work just to ignore this error with --load-error-handling ignore)
Error: Failed loading page http:///var/www/ ... /runtime/tmp_WkHtmlToPdf_jKGGSW.html (sometimes it will work just to ignore this error with --load-error-handling ignore)
Error: Failed loading page http:///var/www/ ... /tmp_WkHtmlToPdf_fXSwI2.html (sometimes it will work just to ignore this error with --load-error-handling ignore)

Do you guys have any ideas?

jhonka at Mar 25, 2013, 8:26:34 PM

#12523

0 0

Re: Blank page

@jhonka I think it's easier to discuss if you open an issue over at github. Please also include the full command call to wkhtmltopdf. The http:// in front of the file paths seem very odd to me.

Mike at Mar 25, 2013, 8:57:17 PM

#12701

0 0

wkhtmltopdf: cannot connect to X server

"wkhtmltopdf: cannot connect to X server" on ubuntu 12.04.2

Fix: apt-get install xvfb

// WkHtmlToPdf.php
public function getCommand($filename)
{
        $command = 'xvfb-run ';
        // ...

Other attempt:

'bin' => 'xvfb-run /usr/bin/wkhtmltopdf',

... but error: Could not execute xvfb-run /usr/bin/wkhtmltopdf

02xK at Apr 6, 2013, 2:20:37 PM

#12702

0 0

Re: wkhtmltopdf: cannot connect to X server

This rather looks like a problem with wkhtmltopdf. Does it run on the command line? If not and you still think, the problem is caused by the behavior please open a new issue on the github page.

Mike at Apr 6, 2013, 3:19:53 PM

#12703

0 0

Re: Re: wkhtmltopdf: cannot connect to X server

It's a wkhtmltopdf problem if you want to run it with x11.
As a workaround you have to run it with xvfb-run or do this: https://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/wiki/compilation

02xK at Apr 6, 2013, 3:49:47 PM

#14495

0 0

Nice!

Great work mike thanks for making this extension!

I needed this to produce pdfs for the fullcalendar plugin, works great with wkhtmltopdf-0.10.0_rc2-static-amd64 tested on Ubuntu 10.04.

One note, if anybody is trying to include a query with GET parameters, the url needs to be in quotes.
Also this solution is session-less, so for example if you're trying to do this for a backend you'll need to have a controller/action that is publicly accessible, then probably just implement some sort of key (in POST or GET) in order to authenticate those requests.

jcsmesquita at Aug 17, 2013, 11:21:25 PM

#14499

0 0

Re: Nice!

Thanks jcsmesquita.

I'm not sure though, what you mean by "session-less". As you can see from the example, the extension integrates transparently into Yii. You can use the same access control mechanisms as for any other Yii action. Sessions do work.

Mike at Aug 18, 2013, 9:40:15 AM

#14503

0 0

Re: Re: Nice!

Hey Mike,

My mistake!
To clarify, I got it working using this:

$pdf = new WkHtmlToPdf();
$pdf->addPage("http://localhost/myproject/print/invoice");
$pdf->send();

So that's why I said it was session-less :/ For some when I try the renderPdf approach as shown in the example it doesn't render the widget in my view... The widget has some javascript and requires jQuery, I'm getting the feeling that none of my js is working with renderPdf

jcsmesquita at Aug 18, 2013, 3:33:50 PM

#14507

0 0

Re: Re: Re: Nice!

If you do it like in your code, you're not really using any of the extension features at all. You could also have used PHPWkHtmlToPdf directly. The idea of this extension is, to make it easy to integrate it with Yii. So renderPdf() should work.

If you can create a boiled down example that demonstrates your problem with widgets, you could create an issue on the github page and i can have a look.

Mike at Aug 19, 2013, 7:07:06 AM

#14508

0 0

Re: Re: Re: Re: Nice!

Moving to GitHub... thanks!

jcsmesquita at Aug 19, 2013, 10:18:08 AM

#16979

0 0

Hi! blank page

/protected/runtime/application.log

2014/04/17 16:27:33 [error] [ext.pdfable.Pdfable] Could not create PDF for view invoice
in /home/sergmoro1/www/tuz/protected/extensions/pdfable/Pdfable.php (209)
in /home/sergmoro1/www/tuz/protected/extensions/pdfable/pdfable/controllers/DemoController.php (53)
in /home/sergmoro1/www/tuz/protected/extensions/pdfable/pdfable/controllers/DemoController.php (53)

2014/04/17 16:38:29 [error] [ext.pdfable.Pdfable] Could not create PDF for view invoice
in /home/sergmoro1/www/tuz/protected/extensions/pdfable/Pdfable.php (209)
in /home/sergmoro1/www/tuz/protected/controllers/OrderController.php (202)
in /home/sergmoro1/www/tuz/protected/controllers/OrderController.php (202)

public function actionInvoice($id) {
  $this->layout = '/layouts/pdf';
  $this->renderPdf('invoice',
    array('model'=>$this->loadModel($id)),
    array(), 
    Yii::getPathOfAlias('webroot') . '/images/invoice/invoice_' . $id . '.pdf'
  );
}

sergmoro1 at Apr 18, 2014, 5:16:05 AM

#16981

0 0

Re: Hi! blank page

Can you please open an issue on github?

Mike at Apr 18, 2014, 8:11:42 AM

Categories

Popular Tags

pdfable Create PDFs from web pages with PHPWkHtmlToPdf

PDFable ¶

Documentation ¶

Requirements ¶

Example ¶

Changelog ¶

1.0.1 ¶

1.0.0 ¶

Downloads

Related Extensions