There are quite a number of PHP libraries for creating PDF files, such as FPDF , Panda and dompdf , for example , but in my opinion, the best is the R & OS pdf class . I first learned about it from the book PHP Anthology . I tried other libraries to create PDF, some only work on PHP5, some on earlier versions, but none of them provided me with the same control and ease of use as R & OS. And so I use this class in my example.

Let's start

Before we begin, download the archive that I have prepared for you. It contains CodeIgniter 1.6.3, as well as all the code and libraries that are described in this example.

To work with the R & OS library you need 2 files, these are class.ezpdf.php and class.pdf.php . They are located in the application / libraries directory. For R & OS to work properly, some font files are also needed, which are located in the root of the archive in the fonts directory.

I made some changes to make everything work correctly in CodeIgniter. Renamed class.ezpdf.php to cezpdf.php and replaced line 3 with

include_once (APPPATH. 'libraries / class.pdf.php' );

I also created a tutorial.php controller and a pdf_helper helper. php
')

Hello world

function hello_world ()
{
$ this -> load-> library ( 'cezpdf' );

$ this -> cezpdf-> ezText ( 'Hello World' , 12, array ( 'justification' => 'center' ));
$ this -> cezpdf-> ezSetDy (-10);

$ content = 'The quick, brown fox jumps over a lazy dog. DJs flock by when MTV ax quiz prog.
Junk MTV quiz graced by fox whelps. Bawds jog, flick quartz, vex nymphs. ' ;

$ this -> cezpdf-> ezText ($ content, 10);

$ this -> cezpdf-> ezStream ();
}

Using the code above, we created this PDF file.

First we connected the R & OS library. Then, using ezText (), we set the title of our document. This function accepts the first text of the header text, then the font size and the last optional argument passed in the form of an array are additional configuration options. For example, alignment (in this case, center)

After the header, we will add some empty space using ezSetDy () . Then we place the text contained in the $ content variable. To do this, again use ezText () . And complete the creation of our document using ezStream () . This function forms the document and sends it to the browser. Now the user can view or download our PDF.

We work with tabular data

When you work with reports, or any data that needs a table view, the task of displaying a table in PDF becomes non-trivial. But in an R & OS library, this is as easy as creating an array.

function tables ()
{
$ this -> load-> library ( 'cezpdf' );

$ db_data [] = array ( 'name' => 'Jon Doe' , 'phone' => '111-222-3333' , 'email' => 'jdoe@someplace.com' );
$ db_data [] = array ( 'name' => 'Jane Doe' , 'phone' => '222-333-4444' , 'email' => 'jane.doe@something.com' );
$ db_data [] = array ( 'name' => 'Jon Smith' , 'phone' => '333-444-5555' , 'email' => 'jsmith@someplacepsepsecial.com' );

$ col_names = array (
'name' => 'Name' ,
'phone' => 'Phone Number' ,
'email' => 'E-mail Address'
);

$ this -> cezpdf-> ezTable ($ db_data, $ col_names, 'Contact List' , array ( 'width' => 550));
$ this -> cezpdf-> ezStream ();
}

That's what we did.

In the above code, I created the $ db_data dataset , then created the $ col_names array with the keys corresponding to the column names of the future table. To create a table, use the ezTable () function. In the first argument, the array with the data of the table is passed, then the array with the names of the columns, the third argument is the name of the table, and the last, optional argument is the array with the configuration data. In this case, the width of the table.

Heading and Basement

Quite a large number of reports contain standard headers / footers. They may contain the date of creation, the name of the author of the document, the number of pages and so on.

The process of adding headers / footers is a bit more complicated. I brought this process to helper

function prep_pdf ($ orientation = 'portrait' )
{
$ CI = & get_instance ();

$ CI-> cezpdf-> selectFont (base_url (). '/ Fonts' );

$ all = $ CI-> cezpdf-> openObject ();
$ CI-> cezpdf-> saveState ();
$ CI-> cezpdf-> setStrokeColor (0,0,0,1);
if ($ orientation == 'portrait' ) {
$ CI-> cezpdf-> ezSetMargins (50,70,50,50);
$ CI-> cezpdf-> ezStartPageNumbers (500,28,8, '' , '{PAGENUM}' , 1);
$ CI-> cezpdf-> line (20,40,578,40);
$ CI-> cezpdf-> addText (50,32,8, 'Printed on' . Date ( 'm / d / Yh: i: s a' ));
$ CI-> cezpdf-> addText (50,22,8, 'CI PDF Tutorial - www.christophermonnat.com ' );
}
else {
$ CI-> cezpdf-> ezStartPageNumbers (750,28,8, '' , '{PAGENUM}' , 1);
$ CI-> cezpdf-> line (20,40,800,40);
$ CI-> cezpdf-> addText (50,32,8, 'Printed on'. Date ( 'm / d / Y h: i: s a' ));
$ CI-> cezpdf-> addText (50,22,8, 'CI PDF Tutorial - www.christophermonnat.com ' );
}
$ CI-> cezpdf-> restoreState ();
$ CI-> cezpdf-> closeObject ();
$ CI-> cezpdf-> addObject ($ all, 'all' );
}

An example of using this helper can be found in the headers () function of the tutorial.php controller. Final PDF.

The above code is in the prep_pdf () function of the pdf_helper.php helper. This feature does all the work of creating a footer for a PDF file. All I need to do is load this helper and call the prep_pdf () function in the controller.

Conclusion

I did not go into details in this example so that it was not voluminous. All I wanted to show is how easy it is to create PDF documents using CodeIgniter and the R & OS class.
There are many more ways to create PDF files, some of which are described in the CodeIgniter framework wiki .