Module Pages2Pdf

[Wanze]

Hi,

After reading this thread, I decided to make a module that helps generating PDF files of ProcessWire pages.

GitHub: https://github.com/wanze/Pages2Pdf

Modules Directory: http://modules.processwire.com/modules/pages2-pdf/

This module uses the mPDF library to generate the PDF files. It has fully UTF-8 and basic HTML/CSS support for rendering the PDF files.

The output is customizable with ProcessWire templates. 

Example

I've enabled generating PDF files for the skyscraper template of ryans Skyscrapers-profile with a template that outputs the data in a table along with the body text and the images:

one-atlantic-center-pdf-4177.pdf

Please take a look at the README on GitHub for instructions and further information/examples.

Cheers

Edited April 18, 2015 by Nico Knoll
Added the "module" tag and removed it from title.

[apeisa]

This will be real timesaver and super useful module, thanks Wanze!

[jacmaes]

Wow! This is going to be really helpful!

[MarcC]

Hey, that's really cool. Thanks.

[Martijn Geerts]

Very cool !

Will check it out soon.

Thanks

[Soma]

Cool thanks! Bisch voll im Schuss!? ;-) Why didnt this post appear in my no read list?

[arjen]

Great addition Wanze! Might need this soon. Already started looking at the wat luis generated pdf's, but this seems great!

[woop]

Looks great! Would it be possible to render multiple pages in a single .pdf using this?

[Wanze]

Thanks people,

Please report feedback or ideas for further improvements.

Looks great! Would it be possible to render multiple pages in a single .pdf using this?

Yep. The pdf is generated from a ProcessWire template in /site/templates/pages2pdf/.

Think of it as a normal Pw template: You can use $page, $pages, $users and all other variables to search and output your

content. The only restriction is that you have limited html support, so make sure you use supported html

tags in TCPDF (see link in first post).

There's also another module which generates pdfs from the Admin:

http://modules.processwire.com/modules/pdfcomposer/

[teppo]

Just dropping in to say that I'll definitely try this module out soon, looks very promising. Thanks for making this!

For the record, I've used mPDF in the past for creating PDF versions of pages. It's HTML and CSS support seemed superior compared to other libraries at the time, at least for my use cases. Might have to switch one site to use this module instead of mPDF just to see how they really compare.

Taking a look at your code I'm seeing quite a bit similarities with these libraries; for an example seem to have identical method names. Interesting.

[Wanze]

Hi teppo,

Thanks.

This is very interesting, I didn't know mPDF before. Looks very promising if the html support is better plus the whole

library is very lightweight compared toTCPDF.

TCPDF and also mPDF are both extensions of FPDF. Some years ago, I used FPDF but the problem there

is the missung UTF-8 and HTML support.

As most of the libraries seem to depend on FPDF, this now has the advantage that one could easily exchange the library behind the module without changing much code.

Looking forward to your feedback!

[Manol]

Great module, I'll give it a good use.

Thank you for sharing Wanze.

[Wanze]

Thanks manviny!

If you have ideas for improvements, please share.

Haven't used the module myself actually

Cheers

[horst]

Hi Wanze, great work and very useful!

I have one question: do you plan to embedd the FPDI-Extension into it?

I know it from working with FPDF. In the past FPDI-Extension couldn't bundled with TCPDF a long time because of the licence, but this has changed a few year ago.
 

Would be useful to upload or otherwise specify a PDF as background on a 'per-Template-Basis'. (<= uh, ugly Denglish)

[Soma]

Horst tha meta data man!

[Wanze]

Horst - thanks!

Never heard of the FPDI extension. I checked your link and read some docs on the website, but I'm not sure

how this should be integrated here.

Can you give me more details?

What do you mean with "background"? As far as I understand, FPDI is used to import pages from other

pdf's into your pdf.

Grüsse nach Deutschland!

[horst]

Horst - thanks!

Never heard of the FPDI extension. I checked your link and read some docs on the website, but I'm not sure

how this should be integrated here.

Can you give me more details?

What do you mean with "background"? As far as I understand, FPDI is used to import pages from other

pdf's into your pdf.

Grüsse nach Deutschland!

Hi Wanze, yes with the FPDI extension you can import other PDFs, but in different ways. What I mean with 'as Background' and what I'm find very useful is, for example:

You can take a PDF with your e.g. Briefkopf , assuming you have a first page with all your stuff (Logo, adress, bankinfo, tax number, etc.) and a second page with less data (maybe a smaller version of your Logo and only name and phone number), and use it as background-layers:

// example use of FPDI-Extension with FPDF.

	$tplfile = 'C:/fpdf/templates/mein_briefkopf.pdf';
	$pagecount = $this->pdf->setSourceFile($tplfile);              // defining the sourcefile returns Pagenumber of it
	for($i=1;$i<=$pagecount;$i++)
	{
		$this->fpdiTemplates['tpl_s'.$i] = $this->pdf->ImportPage($i);     // import each page and assign it to a variable
	}
	$this->Parser_Opened = TRUE;
	$this->Use_Template = $this->fpdiTemplates['tpl_s1'];
	...                                                            // write own stuff to the first page
                                                                       // switch the Template to the second page for all
                                                                       // following pages (optional)
        $this->Use_Template = $this->fpdiTemplates['tpl_s2'];
        ... // create more pages

With the use of FPDI-Templates you can add graphical stuff to your pdf-pages with less effort.

On my website one can add images to a virtual lightbox and can download them as a PDF.

There are three template pages: one for the image pages, one with my contact-data and copyright notice! and optional one for user notes.

..., und viele Grüße in die Schweiz

[Macrura]

Wow horst - that is super awesome; I'll have to revisit this, because i need something like this for a site i'm currently working on, where there is a product and we want to generate a slick product sheet, downloadable pdf using the existing PW content and images...

[onjegolders]

Hi Wanze, thanks for all your work on this, I'm excited to try it out.

Problem I have at the moment is the render call isn't outputting anything. I've definitely added my template in the module settings but there's no link or anything getting outputted.

Have you seen this issue before?

Thanks.

[Wanze]

Hi onjegolders,

I just noticed that I forgot to add an 'echo' in front of the render call in my first post - updated.

It should be:

echo $modules->get('Pages2Pdf')->render();

Was this the issue? (hope so... )

[onjegolders]

Yeah that sorted it thanks Wanze, I should have seen that!

Do you know what differences there are between this implementation and using HTML2PDF?

I have a very basic usage of that library and it seems to work "OK" but I'm guessing a PW way is better. Are there any other differences that you know of?

Thanks again for all your hard work Wanze.

[Wanze]

No problem - thanks you for finding this one!

I've never used html2pdf before, but it looks like it's an addition on top of tcpdf - the framework that this module is using.

Don't know the differences exactly. This module just integrates TCPDF into ProcessWire, making it easier for you to setup

everything. However, it could be the case that html2pdf has better html support built in for rendering the pdfs than tcpdf.

The module handles creating / caching pdf's for you and you can output the content with Pw templates. This means,

you have the full Pw API available if needed.

If anyone can confirm that other libraries, e.g. html2pdf or mPDF have actually better html support than TCPDF, I'll switch the

framework behind the module.

[onjegolders]

Thanks Wanze, the caching may be worth it by itself. Thanks again buddy.

[sakkoulas]

hi wanze, i have a problem with this module.

When i use english characters is working fine and it exports successfully the pdfs.

But with the greek chars i get question marks.

is there any solution for this; i have search the tcpdf examples but i can't make it  to work

thanks.

[Wanze]

Hi sakkoulas,

That's because the standard font set by the module does not have those characters included. I removed all fonts but the standard ones from the tcpdf folder so the module doesn't get too heavy.

You can do those steps:

1. Download TCPDF
2. Copy all files starting with freesans* or freeserif* to /site/modules/Pages2Pdf/tcpdf/fonts
3. In your module configs, set freesans/freeserif under Default font

Then the greek characters work (make sure you enable debug mode or save the page to delete any cached pdfs).

I think this is the easiest solution. Disadvantage is that the pdf is a bit heavier due to this font which includes all unicode characters.

Another possibility is to convert a greek font to TCPDF according to the docs: http://www.tcpdf.org/fonts.php

Does this work for you?