Module Pages2Pdf

[Bacelo]

Hi,

I'm working on the pdf layout and do not get it managed to have several images of PW pages in line on one pdf page.

I have only pages with images so the pdf file includes the images of the selected pages of the session, but they are all listed among each other.

EDIT:

It was a stupid question from me ...

-> table layout and a simple php for loop does the job.

[Wanze]

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

Thanks Can, glad it works for you

I'm currently rewriting the module and will switch the pdf engine behind to mpdf which seems to have much better support for html.

@Bacelo

There are no stupid questions 

[Can]

Great to hear Wanze. I'll await this with joy 

Do you already have a possible release date? 

Cheers

hmm..it's working quite okay as I said, but seems to only work for pages under a specific parent

got one other page where I want to prove PDF version..it uses the same template and I'm not checking for this parent or something so there shouldn't be any exclusion

the PDF is getting created but only with header and footer without content..hmm :/

strange..I'm just posting this because maybe someone else could need the hint

solved pdf not working for certain page by duplicating the page via core page clone module and voila it's working without any other changes or creating the page from scratch again

Edited June 27, 2014 by Can

[pwFoo]

Thanks Can, glad it works for you

I'm currently rewriting the module and will switch the pdf engine behind to mpdf which seems to have much better support for html.

Would be great to have the option to specify a page. So generate the pdf link for given page instead of the current page?

So it gets more flexible

[Can]

Would be great to have the option to specify a page. So generate the pdf link for given page instead of the current page?

So it gets more flexible

You can do this directly in your template pwFoo.

I have this in the template I want to generate the PDF from

if($sanitizer->text($input->get->pdf) === '1') $modules->get('Pages2Pdf')->render();

And in the template where I´m linking to the page I just add ?pdf=1 at the end of the link.

like <a href="{$chlid->url}?pdf=1">PDF Version</a>

You probably need to create a PDF template in /site/templates/pages2pdf folder

That's it.

[pwFoo]

Thanks Can, I'll try it again that way. Maybe it would work the second time. First time it loads the page instead to generate and download a pdf.

Would be great to set a page/ id and get a pdf download link without load the page itself.

[Can]

yeah pdf generation seems to be kind of 1980. it probably get's better after wanze's update

do you created a page specific template under /templates/pages2pdf/ ?
it was important for me and and hat to tweak a lot

I'm outputting only via heredoc to keep all "double quotes" instead of 'single quotes' (you could escape them of course)

[pwFoo]

Yes, I'll build a simple pdf template which works fine so long linked and used at current page.

But don't get it work as a download link from another page.

But for now your way would be fine to get it work. After the module update maybe it's easier to do

[Bacelo]

@Bacelo

There are no stupid questions 

  Thank you Wanze

Hi,

I'm working on the pdf layout and do not get it managed to have several images of PW pages in line on one pdf page.

I have only pages with images so the pdf file includes the images of the selected pages of the session, but they are all listed among each other.

EDIT:

It was a stupid question from me ...

-> table layout and a simple php for loop does the job.

I'm still optimizing the layout of the generated pdf file.

I got it managed to have one table for each 5 pages (pictures).

I tried everything with the table width, but I can't get it done to have the tables / cells  always fit to their content (pictures only) with no space left in the cells.

The tables always seams to have the full page width. I have no width set for any table attribute so actually it should be fine.

Any clue?

[gebeer]

Hello and thank you for this module!

I'm planning to use it on a client's side, but with some extended features:

Users can add pages to some type of "shopping cart". All pages in the cart are then merged into a pdf that is offered for download.

I am not talking about a webshop here, just the cart functionality.

There is an extension for Joomla that does exactly that: http://netamity.com/extensions/contented-pdf

I'm currently researching possibilities to build this with PW as I'm switching more and more over to PW from Joomla. So it would be great if you could give me any pointers on how to achieve the pdf cart thing in PW.

Another idea is to create the PDFs for every page on save from admin. Then have the cart functionality which collects the already created pages and merges them into one downloadable pdf file. This would be less workload for the server (only merging existing files, no creation on the fly).

Can we hook into your module from the admin on creating/saving a page?

Cheers

Gerhard

[Can]

Should be possible to have it like a search, kind off.

You store selected pages via page field in the cart and then in the pdf template you iterate through them and output as pdf

just ask if you need more help

[gebeer]

Thanks Can for your ideas.

After browsing through available modules, I think I'm going to use a modified version of Apeisa's cart module https://github.com/apeisa/Shop-for-ProcessWire/blob/master/ShoppingCart.module to add pages to a cart.

Do you have any idea how to hook into the pages2pdf module on save/update of pages in the admin? I found this post https://processwire.com/talk/topic/2331-doing-additional-logic-after-saving-a-new-page/

Not sure though if that goes in the right direction and how to hook into pdf creation from there.

Cheers

Gerhard

[Can]

Think you could make your own little "cart"

just a littly form with a hidden field for storing the page->id or if this form is on the same page you want to add to the cart you don't even need the hidden field.

 

if($input->post->addtocart && !$cart) {
  $cart = new Page();
    $cart->parent = $pages->get(5771);
    $cart->template = 'cart';
    $cart->title  = 'session_id()'; //for example
    $cart->save();
    $cart->of(false);
    $cart->items = $pages->id; //not a hundred percent sure right now but should work (think I've done it like this already)
  }
}

items field would be multi page fieldtype 

you would then include this "$modules->get('Pages2Pdf')->render();" into the page template you want to generate the pdf's from

on the cart page you add a link for the customer, think it should work when you just link to one of the pages and append ?pdf=1 to the url, which will then create the pdf

create a new template under /templates/pages2pdf/ with the same name as the template you put the "$modules->get('Pages2Pdf')->render();" in

in this template you iterate through the pages in the cart like you would on a blog page or similar and output everything you need

for me the final output worked only with heredoc syntax, seems that proper double quotes are needed by tcpdf (you could echo as "normal" but then you would need to escape the double quotes)

hoffe es ist einigermaßen verständlich und klappt (hope it's understandable and works)

[gebeer]

Hello Can,

thanks a lot for your input. I will give this a shot and let you know how it works out.

Vielen Dank!

Gerhard

[benbyf]

Awesome Module, thanks @Wanze

[benbyf]

may have found a bug: the module settings doesnt seem to allow L instead of P for the orientation, I ended up changing the module defaults to do it - all other fields seem to validate fine.

[Can]

@benbyf

it worked for me, but I had to change the field in the settings everytime I changed any setting.

once set it works.

By the way I just changed to mpdf without any module and it's working really great

really easy to set up

file caching is the only thing missing at the moment.

but that shouldn't be too hard, maybe I'll can dig into pages2pdf and "copy" this part or something

[Macrura]

@Can - could you possibly share how you setup mpdf with PW? maybe on a tutorial thread?

cheers!

[Can]

Here you go Macrura

https://processwire.com/talk/topic/7025-how-to-create-pdfs-with-pw-and-mpdf/

Any tips are highly appreciated

[gebeer]

@benbyf

nice website you have there. I particularly like the way you present your works. Elegant animation on the buttons and the filter effect is way cool.

[Macrura]

@Can - many thanks, looking forward to studying your post!

[Wanze]

Hi folks,

I have refactored the module and a new version is available on the dev branch here: 

https://github.com/wanze/Pages2Pdf/tree/dev

The module now uses mpdf in the background which has superior HTML/CSS support compared to TCPDF, but the library is slightly heavier.

What's new?

• Creating PDFs is handled by a separate module "WirePDF". This module is just a wrapper around mpdf and you could also use it independently from Pages2Pdf as a Service to create/save/download PDF files from ProcessWire templates
• All the configuration options related to configure mpdf (margins, document orientation...) are now defined in the module WirePDF
• Some new config options in module pages2pdf. You can configure the PDF filename and the GET variable that is used when requesting a download
• You can download a PDF from any page
• The default templates have changed, with mpdf you now can use a separate stylesheet to separate CSS from HTML markup
• Triggering the creation/download of a PDF file is handled earlier: After the ProcessWire API is ready but before page rendering is initialized. This should improve the performance.
• Calling the render() method is technically no longer required, but it can still be used to output the download link. However, you could write the link by yourself if you prefer.

If you'd like to test out the new version and upgrade the module:

• Please note down all the current settings
• Uninstall pages2pdf module, then replace it with the current one
• Install the new version
• Maybe add your previous settings in the WirePDF module. Some settings are no longer supported or have changed slightly
• If you created manual links to triggering the download in your templates, e.g. added ?pdf=1, you should change the GET variable in the module configs from 'pages2pdf' to 'pdf'
• Take a look at the default_templates in /site/modules/Pages2Pdf. With mpdf, it's better to separate CSS from HTML, so you can create a "styles.css" in /site/modules/templates/pages2pdf/ and define all CSS styles there. The styles are then availalble in your templates.

I hope that's the most important stuff. I'm short in time today (going to a festival), so I can't support

Cheers

[nfil]

hello wanze. Thanks for the update. I have tested it, but now it does not render the images, I have this is my template:

if (count($page->images)) {
$someImages = $page->images->slice(0, 4);
foreach ($someImages as $someImg) {
	$someImgThumb = $someImg->size(290, 195);
	echo "<TD WIDTH='25%'><img src=\"{$someImgThumb->url}\" width=\"{$someImgThumb->width}\" height=\"{$someImgThumb->height}\" /></TD>";
}
}

I followed your instructions, is there some other way to render the images?

Also in the previous version, I couldn't create/view the pdf as a guest, only if I was logged in as a superuser or as an editor.  Is there some setting that I should change to create/view the pdf as a guest?

Thanks!

update: the new updated module was not generating the images in MAMP is working fine on a live host.
I can now also view the pdfs as a guest on the live host, in the previous version, even after saving the page as a superuser, after login off I could not view the pdfs in the live host. It seems to be working very well now. Thanks again waze for this great module.

[horst]

@nfil: just a quick thought: you may try to use the file:/// protocol (with three slashes), e.g.

echo "<TD WIDTH='25%'><img src=\"file:///{$someImgThumb->filename}\" width=\"{$someImgThumb->width}\" height=\"{$someImgThumb->height}\" /></TD>";

Haven't tested and don't know if it can work with mpdf, - just a quick thought.

[Wanze]

Hello and thank you for this module!

I'm planning to use it on a client's side, but with some extended features:

Users can add pages to some type of "shopping cart". All pages in the cart are then merged into a pdf that is offered for download.

I am not talking about a webshop here, just the cart functionality.

There is an extension for Joomla that does exactly that: http://netamity.com/extensions/contented-pdf

I'm currently researching possibilities to build this with PW as I'm switching more and more over to PW from Joomla. So it would be great if you could give me any pointers on how to achieve the pdf cart thing in PW.

Another idea is to create the PDFs for every page on save from admin. Then have the cart functionality which collects the already created pages and merges them into one downloadable pdf file. This would be less workload for the server (only merging existing files, no creation on the fly).

Can we hook into your module from the admin on creating/saving a page?

Cheers

Gerhard

Hi Gerhard,

If you grab the latest version of the module (1.1.0 is now in the master) you have several possibilites to solve this.

1) Use pages2pdf module:

Do you already have a template that shows/lists the pages inside the shopping cart for a user? If so, you could create a corresponding template in /site/templates/pages2pdf/ and list the products there too. This way, the module does most of the work for you, including caching of the PDF files.

What you'd need here is to delete the cached PDF file if the user adds or removes a page in the shopping cart.

Simplest way of doing this is to trigger saving the shopping cart page, then the module will delete the cached PDF file.

2) Use WirePDF module:

WirePDF is just wrapper around mPDF that is optimized to work with ProcessWire. If you want to create the PDF files independently from Pages2Pdf module,

you may want to check out those examples: https://github.com/wanze/Pages2Pdf#wirepdf