Integrating dompdf with CakePHP

I was under a lot of pressure to quickly implement PDF reports in my CakePHP application. Luckily I came across this excellent tutorial.

dompdf is an HTML to PDF converter written in PHP. It is a style-driven renderer: it will download and read external stylesheets, inline style tags, and the style attributes of individual HTML elements. It also supports most presentational HTML attributes.

I am going to add some flesh to the original and give some additional information based on my implementation.

1. Starting point:
   1. I am working on a WAMP stack
   2. I have a standard CakePHP applications set-up
   3. I have a Customer in my app (you can naturally adapt to suit)
2. Download dompdf and place the extracted files in /app/Vendor
3. Add the following code to /app/Config/routes.php
   
   
   code snippet

   Router::parseExtensions('pdf');

   1	Router::parseExtensions('pdf');

4. In your controller, we have to load RequestHandler component so CakePHP can parse the .pdf extension. The post mentions adding it to AppController which makes sense but states that this is not recommended. It did not work for me, so I ended up adding it to the relevant Controllers
   
   code snippet

   class CustomersController extends AppController { // you may already have components in the array - just add 'RequestHandler' public $components = array('RequestHandler'); // the rest of your code }

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   class CustomersController extends AppController {     // you may already have components in the array - just add 'RequestHandler'     public $components = array('RequestHandler');     // the rest of your code }

5. Create a new folder in /app/View/Layouts called pdf
6. Add your new Layout, default.ctp:
   
   PHP

   <?php require_once(APP . 'Vendor' . DS . 'dompdf' . DS . 'dompdf_config.inc.php'); spl_autoload_register('DOMPDF_autoload'); $dompdf = new DOMPDF(); $dompdf->set_paper = 'A4'; $dompdf->load_html(utf8_decode($content_for_layout), Configure::read('App.encoding')); $dompdf->render(); echo $dompdf->output();

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   <?php   require_once(APP . 'Vendor' . DS . 'dompdf' . DS . 'dompdf_config.inc.php'); spl_autoload_register('DOMPDF_autoload'); $dompdf = new DOMPDF(); $dompdf->set_paper = 'A4'; $dompdf->load_html(utf8_decode($content_for_layout), Configure::read('App.encoding')); $dompdf->render(); echo $dompdf->output();

7. Create a new action in our Customer controller. You actually don’t need to do this: if you call the methods that already exist you will get the data you want to proceed, but it does provide for better control on the output for PDF file, eg. the ability to increase the memory allocation.
   
   code snippet

   public function view_pdf() { // increase memory limit in PHP ini_set('memory_limit', '512M'); $this->set(compact('customers', $this->Customer->find('all'))); }

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   public function view_pdf() {     // increase memory limit in PHP     ini_set('memory_limit', '512M');     $this->set(compact('customers', $this->Customer->find('all'))); }

8. Duplicate our Customer view.ctp, rename it to view_pdf.ctp to reflect the action name, and place it in a new pdf folder in app/View/Customer.
   
   view_pdf.ctp

   <?php echo $this->element('pdf-head'); // NB: footer must be at the beginning of the file... echo $this->element('pdf-foot'); // here is the body of your content as such echo $this->Html->tag('h2', $customer['Customer']['name']); // get all you HTML goodness in here - just make certain it is well-formed! // tables, in-line css - it all works echo '</body>'; echo '</html>';

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   <?php echo $this->element('pdf-head'); // NB: footer must be at the beginning of the file... echo $this->element('pdf-foot');   // here is the body of your content as such echo $this->Html->tag('h2', $customer['Customer']['name']);   // get all you HTML goodness in here - just make certain it is well-formed! // tables, in-line css - it all works   echo '</body>'; echo '</html>';

9. Here he mentions battling with css files — I managed to get that working — more later!
10. Create a link to your PDF:
    
    code snippet

    <?php // I am a big fan of opening things like this in a new tab, hence the target attribute echo $this->Html->link('PDF Export', array('controller' => 'customers', 'action' => 'view_pdf', 'ext' => 'pdf'), array( "class"=>"pdf_report", "target"=>"_blank" )); ?>

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    <?php // I am a big fan of opening things like this in a new tab, hence the target attribute echo $this->Html->link('PDF Export', array('controller' => 'customers', 'action' => 'view_pdf', 'ext' => 'pdf'), array( "class"=>"pdf_report", "target"=>"_blank" )); ?>

11. To get my View code a bit more organised, I created two Elements:
    1. pdf-head.ctp
       
       pdf-head.ctp

       <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <?php define("APPLICATIONTIMEFORMAT", "Y-m-d"); // this standard CakePHP does NOT work echo $this->Html->meta('icon'); echo $this->Html->css('pdf'); echo $this->fetch('meta'); echo $this->fetch('css'); ?> <title>stylus PDF</title> // but this does... <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="<?php echo APP.'webroot'.DS.'css'.DS.'pdf.css'; ?>" media="all" /> </head> <body id="pdf"> // your logo is in the standard CakePHP location: /app/webroot/img <?php echo $this->Html->image("logo.gif", array('fullBase' => true, "id"=>"logo")); ?>

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       <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <?php define("APPLICATIONTIMEFORMAT", "Y-m-d");   // this standard CakePHP does NOT work echo $this->Html->meta('icon'); echo $this->Html->css('pdf'); echo $this->fetch('meta'); echo $this->fetch('css'); ?> <title>stylus PDF</title> // but this does... <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="<?php echo APP.'webroot'.DS.'css'.DS.'pdf.css'; ?>" media="all" /> </head> <body id="pdf"> // your logo is in the standard CakePHP location: /app/webroot/img <?php echo $this->Html->image("logo.gif", array('fullBase' => true, "id"=>"logo")); ?>

    2. pdf-foot.ctp
       
       pdf-foot.ctp

       <div id="pdf_footer" style="A_CSS_ATTRIBUTE:all;"> <table> <tr> <td id="copyright">Copyright &copy; <?php echo date("Y"); ?> stylus</td> <td id="printdate">Printed: <?php echo date(APPLICATIONTIMEFORMAT); ?></td> </tr> </table> </div>

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       <div id="pdf_footer" style="A_CSS_ATTRIBUTE:all;">     <table>         <tr>             <td id="copyright">Copyright &copy; <?php echo date("Y"); ?> stylus</td>             <td id="printdate">Printed: <?php echo date(APPLICATIONTIMEFORMAT); ?></td>         </tr>     </table> </div>

12. One of the issues I had was getting images into my PDF — I wanted a logo at the top right of each page. Note the fullBase attribute in my pdf-head.ctp Element! (This answer on StackOverflow nailed it for me: http://stackoverflow.com/a/29224050/4779449)
13. Please also note the footer funkiness: the odd order of the include is required to repeat the footer content at the bottom of each page (if that is what you are after).

Thanks again to the author of the original post: http://www.syahzul.com/cakephp/how-to-generate-pdf-in-cakephp-2-x-with-dompdf/

Please note that I have already hit a short-coming of dompdf: it’s inability to handle large file sizes.