Module Pages2Pdf

[sakkoulas]

thanks wanze 

[Manol]

Hello Wanze.

     mpdf seems to have same great features, could include it in your module?.

Regards.

[Wanze]

Hi Manol,

Did you find some any features that tcpdf doesn't have?

Can you describe the functionality you need?

By looking at the features on the mpdf website, I can't detect anything that isn't doable with TCPDF.

However, mpdf is based on FPDF - this is the basic class for all other distributions (TCPDF, HTML2PDF etc.)

So it should be very simple to change it in the module.

I'd help you out if you really need mpdf!

Cheers

[horst]

@Wanze: they have wide support for HTML and CSS: http://processwire.com/talk/topic/4338-how-to-include-mpdf/#entry42512 and also using different fonts is easy. Don't know TCPDF, but have read there docs and can't remember of such wide support for CSS / HTML. ?

[Manol]

Hello Wanze as Horst says, basically it mpdf seems to have the best suppot for html and css.

[Wanze]

The support for HTML and CSS looks good. However, the main problem is that floats or positioning is not supported - which means you can't just render your HTML like the browser does it. And in the end it doesn't matter if you use a div or article tag in the pdf.

TCPDF has also HTML and CSS support, here are some examples:

http://www.tcpdf.org/examples/example_006.pdf

http://www.tcpdf.org/examples/example_061.pdf

Fonts can be added the same way. And changing the fonts with css or inline css (font-family) is possible too.

Would be cool if you could test wether mpdf is *really* better

Generate the markup needed for the pdf with mpdf, maybe outside of Pw? Then try to do the same with TCPDF / this module. If it does not look good with TCPDF, I'd switch to mpdf.

Edit:

Problem is that I can't include two pdf distributions, they're both pretty heavy and extending FPDF, so there would be also a lot of code duplication

[BFD Calendar]

Wonderful module. For some reason the pdf doesn't want to include a background image. Tried to force it in a table, but no go....

<style type="text/css">
table.page {
	padding: 15px;
	background-image: url(bfd_background_opacred_800x2359.png);
	background-color: #FFD6D9;
	background-repeat: no-repeat;
	background-position: top;
}
</style>

<table class="page"><tr><td>

The background color works but the image doesn't. The image is in the 'pages2pdf' folder. Tried putting it in the 'templates' folder and tried full url but nothing works.

Any ideas?

When the pdf covers several pages (multiple items in a find array) the html becomes slightly messed up, but that's maybe due to my clunky coding....

[adrian]

I don't think TCPDF (the library used by this module) supports css background images. It can set background images (http://www.tcpdf.org/examples/example_051.phps), but I don't think it can convert from a css background image.

Depending on your needs, you might be better off manually coding the creation of the PDF, rather than using this module. That way you can use all the options in the TCPDF API, or even use a different pdf generating library - there are lots out there. Of course this won't work if you want all your site pages to be available as PDFs, but it is possibly a better option if you just want to generate something specific like an invoice.

[BFD Calendar]

Adrian, 1 - you seem to have a solution for any of my problems. 2 - what a bummer that I probably need new headcracking code to get what I want....

Too bad 'manually coding' doesn't involve a wrench, pliers, rock'n'roll tape and a piece of wire.

For now I want just one PDF export from a 'daily' list of events. But then since I started using ProcessWire it's been stirring my imagination and creativity and I'm bound to expand the possibilities. If every expansion needs a new (coding) language then that's simply too much for me.

[Wanze]

Hi BFD Calendar,

I also think that rendering an image with CSS "background-image" is not supported in TCPDF.

I will change the PDF distribution from TCPDF to mpdf, although I'm not sure if it is possible to specify a background image within a table with mpdf.

But maybe you could set it on a div and wrap the div around the table?

What should work is output an image with the "img" tag. How should your list look like? Maybe you could output the image inside a <td> ?

Next week I'll find some time to include mpdf and maybe spend some more features for this module.

[BFD Calendar]

Wanze, I tried putting everything in a div, doesn't work. The div ends up on the first page of the pdf and the content on the next, with no background.

Putting images in a <td> works fine:

<td width=\"75\" valign=\"bottom\"><div class=\"image\"><img src=\"{$webimage}\"></div></td>

The $webimage is an url to images on other websites, by putting them in a div set to max-width:75 they all line up well in the same size. What also doesn't seem to work is the 'valign' value.

DDV

[cstevensjr]

I finally got around to actually checking out this module yesterday.  A very useful module with great configurable options.  You saved me many hours of work.  Thanks.

[alan]

Thanks Wanze for this Module

Has anyone used Wanze's Module to create a downloadable PDF of a form entry from the From Builder system by any chance?

Doing booking confirmations for people, I'm considering upon form submit offering the submitter a link to a PDF of their booking so they can download it.

I'll need to address security so others can't access PDFs (such as matching a session variable and if I read this Module right, it can create PDFs for download 'on the fly' rather than storing them?).

Thanks for any pointers

[horst]

Hi Alan,

I would go with a bootstraped script that checks session settings (URL like: http://example.com/yourpdf.php). You need to keep security entry and the infos which pdf / page regards to this session. If it can create pdf on the fly you only need to secure your session settings (limited to a browser / fingerprint or somethnig that like for a limited timeperiod)

[alan]

Thank you for the tips horst, most appreciated

[Wanze]

Thanks Wanze for this Module

Has anyone used Wanze's Module to create a downloadable PDF of a form entry from the From Builder system by any chance?

Doing booking confirmations for people, I'm considering upon form submit offering the submitter a link to a PDF of their booking so they can download it.

I'll need to address security so others can't access PDFs (such as matching a session variable and if I read this Module right, it can create PDFs for download 'on the fly' rather than storing them?).

Thanks for any pointers

You're welcome

But I think this module is not very helpful for your task. It's mainly useful if you want to provide one corresponding PDF per page. It does also store the PDFs under /site/assets/files/ for caching purposes - not what you want actually if I understand you correctly.

In your case, I guess i would be easier to use for example mpdf to create your PDFs dynamically on the fly.

About security: If your booking is somehow linked to the user in ProcessWire, this could be as easy as creating a new template with a corresponding page.

This template, let's call it confirmation_downloads first checks if the user is logged in, otherwise throws a 404. Then you can pass along a get parameter with the booking ID. Next, the important check would be if the user of the given ID is the user who booked. If this is the case, you could use mpdf to generate a nice PDF and directly download it.

I'm planning to improve this module by switching from TCPDF to mpdf and write a wrapper class which helps to generate PDFs. I think this will be a separate module. Pages2Pdf itself then uses the new class only to generate the PDFs.

[pwFoo]

Hi Wanze,

is it possible to generate a PDF from page A at page B?

I try to build a download block with a page as pdf.

To get the link also page A have to enabled as template which can create PDF files, but a modified link (path to page B) works only as redirect to the page and doesn't create the PDF download.

Would be nice to set a page/ selector to create the PDF from

Regards

pwFoo

[Wanze]

Hi pwFoo

Assuming I understand what you need, I think this should work.

At your page B, you can append ?pdf=1 to the link which points at page A.

Example:

<a href="<?= $pages->get('pageA')->url . '?pdf=1' ?>">Download PDF from page A</a>

[pwFoo]

Hi Wanze,

thanks for your really fast reply

That's what I thought und tried before my post

Add "?pdf=1" to the wanted page link simple redirect me to that page, but not generate/ download the PDF...

Also added code to both pages

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

and a link  equal to your example.

Quoted code (generate PDF from current page) works fine, but the custom link not...

Maybe I miss something... or it doesn't work.

[Wanze]

You're welcome.

I just realized that this module needs some love from me soon

And sorry, you're right. It won't trigger the download unless page A does call the render method somewhere in the template.

But it should work then if you call it. I'll test this evening.

On page A, if you don't want to output the a link but still make the download work, you could call the method without echoing out its output, like this:

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

[pwFoo]

I don't know how much work it would be...

Could You update your module to accept a page selector as parameter?

Default should be the current page. So every page could be generated as pdf everywhere?

Don't get me wrong! I like it as it is! But generate a pdf of a given page would be awesome 

[Bacelo]

Hi,

this is a wonderful module for PW. Just need to say that - it works great!

As a newbee to PW i'd like to ask, if there is a possibility, to include a "send PDF by email" option?

Regards,

Bacelo

[Wanze]

 Hi Bacelo,

Thanks and sorry for my late reply.

This could be done pretty easy with some custom coding. How would you integrate this into the module?

I want to optimize and rewrite the module in the coming weeks.

Cheers

[Bacelo]

Hi Wanze,

thanks for your reply. As PW is new to me, almost everything is not easy at the moment ...

Actually I have no clue right now, how I would integrate this into the module...

Additional link "Send Pdf" which renders first the pdf file, then opens a little formmailer with captcha (f.e. "Form Template Processor and Mailer") etc. and includes the pdf file.

Cheerio

[Can]

Great work Wanze, thanks for this module!!

Everything works fine after figuring out what works in pdf files and what not^^

One thing I noticed, is that the "page orientation" in the module settings is getting saved but the value in the field switchs back to P so I have to reset this everytime when I change some values.

Cheers Can