Converting HTML to PDF via PHP (install font for html2pdf)

Question

I'm currently attempting to convert HTML markup (from an xml feed) into a PDF dynamically via a PHP script.

From reading other answers the best free way of doing this seemed to be to use html2pdf.

// HTML2PDF
require_once('/public_html/html2pdf/html2pdf.class.php');
$html2pdf = new HTML2PDF('P','A4','en');
$html2pdf->WriteHTML($htmlContent);
$html2pdf->Output('/public_html/wp-content/uploads/rns/html2pdf.pdf');

The problem I'm having is my $htmlContent contains the css: FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman","serif" in various places and my script gives the error:

TCPDF ERROR: Could not include font definition file: "times new roman"

I've googled and the only documentation is this: http://wiki.spipu.net/doku.php?id=html2pdf:en:v4:font

Which in turn leads you to: http://www.tcpdf.org/fonts.php

I'm lost though, the second link says that times/Times New Roman is a core PDF font... I've tried various things and get the same error.

What would I actually need to write to add the font, or alternatively, how could I strip all of the FONT-FAMILY classes out of the $htmlContent (I don't even need it in any particular font, just one that works).

Jitendra Bansal · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-02 13:42:09Z

1

Yes, you should use DOMPDF instead of other libraries. There are lots of fonts available. You can see at "dompdf/lib/fonts/dompdf_font_family_cache.dist.php" and choose according to your requirements. For change the font you need to change the def("DOMPDF_DEFAULT_FONT", "serif") at file path "dompdf/dompdf_config.inc.php":

You can download the latest version available of DOMPDF from: https://code.google.com/p/dompdf/downloads/detail?name=dompdf_0-6-0_beta3.tar.gz&can=2&q=

See the below example:

require_once("dompdf/dompdf_config.inc.php");
$dompdf = new DOMPDF();
$dompdf->load_html($htmlContent);
$dompdf->render();                

$fileName = "invoice.pdf";
$dompdf->stream($fileName);//DOWNLOAD PDF 

//GET OUTPUT AS STRING AND PUT IN TO SOME FILE   
$output = $dompdf->output();
file_put_contents($fileName, $output);

answered Oct 2, 2015 at 13:42

Jitendra Bansal

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2 Comments

mike-source Over a year ago

Works using this... cheers! Just a quick note, I found a newer version of DOMPDF on github (0.7 beta) and it didn't work with the above code, looks like they've changed a few things, the one from the link in this post does what I need though.

mike-source Over a year ago

Sorry... spoke to soon, DOMPDF fails badly when converting HTML tables using this method, and has issues with special characters. Not usable for me. Seems there's a lot of HTML to PDF solutions out there, I wouldn't recommend DOMPDF unless you are doing something very basic.

MRBoom · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-02 10:08:28Z

0

Try to use DomPdf instead of html2pdf. It works great for me on creating invoices in PDF. But some treatments (positioning and font sizes) in your CSS code are needed. The screen content placed as it is didn't work as i expected. https://github.com/dompdf/dompdf

answered Oct 2, 2015 at 10:08

MRBoom

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1 Comment

mike-source Over a year ago

I did look at that before but couldn't figure it out. Doesn't seem to have any php examples or documentation... Do you think you could give an example of how to do the equivalent of what I have above with DomPdf? Just take a string of html $htmlContent and output pdf (to file).

MacroMan · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-02 10:34:43Z

0

It's a bit of a hack, but I found the best way for me was to call capturejs using exec:

$run = "capturejs -u ";
$run .= "https://www.example.com/";
$run .= " -p tlsv1 -V ";
$run .= "1024x768";
$run .= " -o 'myimage.png'";
exec($run);

https://github.com/superbrothers/capturejs

answered Oct 2, 2015 at 10:34

MacroMan

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