PD4ML is HTML-to-PDF converting Java library and
command line tool. With a simple
wrapper script it works also in PHP environment. The
application expects there is Java runtime environment 1.4 (or above)
installed on the server.
This page in other languages: Serbo-Croatian (contributed by Vera Djuraskovic)
More languages: use Google translate tab at the bottom part of the document
The archive includes two PD4ML JAR files (PD4ML java libraries itself) and
three directories.
probe/ - contains an environment test script, demo documents and
demo converting scripts.
fonts/ - includes a Chinese font file for TTF embedding
demonstration
cgi-bin/ - perl CGI scripts for the cases PHP runtime
configuration does not allow to execute java
Upload the unpacked ZIP content to the server and make sure the web server
has read/write permissions for the target directory and the target directory is
PHP-enabled.
cgi-bin/ directory
content is supposed to go to cgi-bin/ directory of the web server. You do
not need the CGI scripts if PHP check succeeds.
Let's say the target directory is mapped to http://myserver/pd4ml/
URL. In order to test the deployment, try to open
http://myserver/pd4ml/probe/index.php
The output should look like on the picture:
If any of the test steps is failed, the script prints suggestions what could
be done to fix.
If the minimal requirements fulfilled, it enables links to demo scripts.
2. Customizing demo scripts
The demo scripts have the following customization points:
$evaluation variable switches between trial (pd4ml_demo.jar) and non-trial
(pd4ml.jar) PD4ML libraries. Set it to "0" after you purchased and
deployed pd4ml.jar
$jar variable allows to specify location of PD4ML jars. In the
examples it is set to "../pd4ml_demo.jar" as long as the library is in the parent
directory.
$java variable specifies Java executable path. If you have
correctly defined $PATH on the server, the value may remain "java".
Otherwise you would need to specify exact Java interpreter location i.e. "/usr/local/bin/java"
$url is URL to convert to PDF.
3. PHP configuration does not allow to run external applications
As the last resort the package includes a couple of CGI scripts. probe.pl
is for environment test and pd4ml.pl is a general purpose converter.
The converter expects source document URL as a 'url' HTTP parameter.
Copy the scripts to CGI-BIN directory of the server and make sure the file
permissions allow the scripts to run. On most UNIX-derived systems 755
file permission mode is expected.
After that adjust $jar variables of the scripts to point to the actual
pd4ml(_demo).jar location. The script execution from PHP is more-less
identical to execution of pd4ml.php in the example below.
4. "As PDF" button from scratch
Below is a sample implementation of "As PDF" button, which can add to
any PHP page its PDF view.
First we need to create a converter PHP
(let's call it pd4ml.php).
The converter utilizes Pd4Cmd
command line tool, which is a part of PD4ML library starting from v3.6.0. If you
use older version of PD4ML library, see previous version
of the document.
For the particular script pd4ml_demo.jar must be in the same directory
where pd4ml.php is
(or the actual JAR path needs to be reflected in "-cp pd4ml_demo.jar"
command line part). The script expects the source
URL is passed as an HTML form variable named 'url'.
The next step is to create the button
on the page you want add PDF view to.
<?php
// the function determines the current page URL
function curPageURL() {
$pageURL = 'http';
if ($_SERVER["HTTPS"] == "on") {
$pageURL .= "s";
}
$pageURL .= "://";
if ($_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"] != "80") {
$pageURL .= "localhost:".$_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
} else {
$pageURL .= "localhost".$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
}
return $pageURL;
}
?>
<!-- ... your HTML code here ... -->
<!-- the button -->
<form action="pd4ml.php" method=post>
<input type=hidden value="<?php echo curPageURL(); ?>" name=url>
<input style="pd4ml-display: none; pd4ml-visibility: hidden"
type=submit value="Get the invoice as PDF">
</form>
The minimalistic PHP code determines
on-a-fly the page URL and stores it as hidden url parameter.
A button press will send the parameter to pd4ml.php and force PDF
generation.
Useful info:
In order to deploy the PDF generating solution you need to copy pd4ml.jar (or
pd4ml_demo.jar) and ss_css2.jar from PD4ML distribution and pd4ml.php
file to any PHP-enabled directory of your web server.
PD4ML-specific style="pd4ml-display: none; pd4ml-visibility: hidden" excludes
the button from the resulting PDF layout.
If you deploy the application to a server, which hosts multiple web
sites, "localhost" server address cannot be distinct. Please use your
actual server name in curPageURL()
instead of it.
There are two places, where you can control PDF page margins. Default HTML
document margins can be changed with BODY { margin: 0 } CSS property. PDF
margins (insets) can be impacted via Pd4Php command line parameter '-insets
TOP,LEFT,BOTTOM,RIGHT,units'. For example: -insets 10,20,10,10,mm
Page orientation can be changed from the default PORTRAIT with
-orientation LANDSCAPE command line parameter
PD4ML Pro feature: you can define page headers/footers with HTML
code like the following <pd4ml:page.header><img src="logo.gif"> page $[page] of
$[total]</pd4ml:page.header>
If you need a generated PDF not to be sent to clients browser, but saved to
the disk, add '-out /generated/file/location/file.pdf'
command-line parameter and remove header('Content-type: application/pdf');
directive in pd4ml.php.
