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Convert HTML To PDF in PHP

HTML To PDF Tutorial

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251 views

Convert HTML To PDF in PHP

HTML To PDF Tutorial

Uploaded by

zandi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Blog archive »

Wed 09 May 2018

Convert HTML To PDF in PHP The


Easy Way
In this tutorial you will learn how to easily convert web pages and raw HTML
documents to PDF in your PHP applications. We will use the Pdfcrowd API for
PDF generation. The API offers these benefits:

The API is easy to use and fully supports HTML/CSS3/JavaScript.


The integration takes only a few minutes.
No third-party libraries are needed, just a single tiny PHP file.
It does not consume CPU/memory on your computer, PDFs are created on
the Pdfcrowd servers.

Introduction
Let's start with an example:

<?php
require 'pdfcrowd.php';

$client = new \Pdfcrowd\HtmlToPdfClient("username", "apikey");


$pdf = $client->convertUrl('https://en.wikipedia.org/');
?>

This code converts en.wikipedia.org and stores the generated PDF to a string
variable. You can save the result to a file or you can stream it to the browser, which
we will discuss in detail shortly. You can click the thumbnail to open the generated
PDF file:
Besides web pages, you can also convert a local HTML file or an HTML string:

<?php
$pdf = $client->convertFile('/path/to/your/file.html');
$pdf = $client->convertString('<b>bold</b> and <i>italic</i>');
?>

It is also possible to save the PDF directly to a file:

<?php
$client->convertUrlToFile('http://example.com/', 'example.pdf');
?>

Basic Customization
Now that you know the basics, you may want to customize the generated PDF.
Let's change the page format to Letter with half-inch margins:

<?php
$client->setPageSize("Letter");
$client->setPageMargins("0.5in", "0.5in", "0.5in", "0.5in");
?>

You can use metric units as well:

<?php
$client->setPageMargins("1cm", "1cm", "10mm", "10mm");
?>

You can also specify the appearance of the PDF when it is opened in a viewer:

<?php
$client->setInitialPdfZoomType(Pdfcrowd::FIT_PAGE);
$client->setPageLayout(Pdfcrowd::CONTINUOUS);
?>

The API provides many other options including password protection and fully
customizable page headers and footers. Learn more about the available options in
the HTML to PDF API - PHP SDK documentation.

Server Side PDF Generation


In this section we will show two common PDF generation scenarios.

Generate PDF and send it to the browser


The following code converts example.com to PDF and sends it as a response:

<?php

require 'pdfcrowd.php';

try {
$client = new \Pdfcrowd\HtmlToPdfClient("username", "apikey");
$pdf = $client->convertUrl("https://example.com.com/");

header("Content-Type: application/pdf");
header("Cache-Control: no-cache");
header("Accept-Ranges: none");
header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=\"example.pdf\"");

echo $pdf;
}
catch(\Pdfcrowd\Error $why) {
fwrite(STDERR, "Pdfcrowd Error: {$why}\n");
}

?>

To convert an HTML string you can use convertString() instead of convertUrl():

<?php
$pdf = $client->convertString("<html><head>..</head><body>..</body></html>");
?>

Since Content-Disposition is set to inline the generated PDF is opened in the


browser. If you change it to attachment the browser will pop up the file download
dialog:

<?php
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"mydomain.pdf\"");
?>

Provide a PDF version of your web pages


This example shows how to enhance your PHP code so it can return a PDF version
of your web pages. Let's look at the following helper function:

<?php
require 'pdfcrowd.php';

function generatePDF()
{
if (!$_GET["pdf"])
return False;

try {
try {
// build the url and remove the pdf field from the query string
$url = "http://" . $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"] . $_SERVER["PHP_SELF"];
if (count($_GET) > 1) {
unset($_GET["pdf"]);
$url = $url . "?" . http_build_query($_GET, '', '&');
}

// call the API


$client = new \Pdfcrowd\HtmlToPdfClient("username", "apikey");
$pdf = $client->convertUrl($url);

// send the generated pdf to the browser


header("Content-Type: application/pdf");
header("Cache-Control: no-cache");
header("Accept-Ranges: none");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"created.pdf\"");

echo $pdf;
}
catch(\Pdfcrowd\Error $why) {
fwrite(STDERR, "Pdfcrowd Error: {$why}\n");
}

return True;
}
?>

The generatePDF() function first checks if there is a pdf field in the query string. If
yes, then the field is removed from the url. The function then passes the modified url
to the API and finally sends the generated PDF to the browser.

You can use the function in your code like this:

<?php
if (generatePDF())
return;

// your HTML rendering code


// ...
?>

https://mydomain.com/page.php?pdf=1 now returns a PDF version of


https://mydomain.com/page.php.

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