Generating PDFs from Laravel Views

If size is a problen, have you considered zipping it? Zip and un-zipping is pretty standard. I send several monthly reports via email zipped. Sorry, not in laravel though.

@jlrdw size is one of the problems, but zipping won't be enough. Being able to select the text is equally as important.

I thought it went without saying, the user could just unzip at their end. But users, we all know. Have you looked at maybe a text format? Might be a lot smaller. Just attach a text file instead of pdf. Just a thought, but interesting problem.

Assuming you're using the laravel package: https://github.com/barryvdh/laravel-snappy

You can set the dpi for the doc plus the images you are adding to the invoices if any it appears.

Here are docs for the usage: https://wkhtmltopdf.org/usage/wkhtmltopdf.txt

Hope this helps.

@jlrdw - text files for invoices? yikes!

@CodebyRay - Thanks! Yes, the dpi would help with the size but I still can't search and select text from the file (they way I can if I just print to pdf from my browser)

Will get back to this problem shortly and update when I come up with the right solution.

Hi,

https://github.com/mikehaertl/php-pdftk - i have used this one and it was better option for me than laravel-snappy

and look here https://murze.be/2017/07/easily-covert-webpages-to-images-using-php/ it is about Browsershot v2 (Convert a webpage to an image or pdf using headless Chrome) from Spatie - definitely worth a look

@Sofia This package will generate a PDF file and you would be able to copy and paste contents in the generated PDF file.

I have used it to generate invoices from views and it has worked very well. Works good for combining PDFfiles also.

https://github.com/barryvdh/laravel-dompdf

Hope this helps.

@harjovica - Thanks, but at first glance I'm not sure that either of those are what I'm looking for....I need to convert an HTML page to a non-image PDF, not build up a PDF form using PHP. Either way, I'll take a closer look.

@CodebyRay - I started trying to use it (before Snappy), but I couldn't get the dependencies sorted out. My server's PHP is @ 5.4 and there were some packages that dompdf required that I wasn't able to get.

A php update is not up to me at this point, but I'll certainly give it another try if we upgrade or if anyone can suggest a workaround.

Good to know that it'll work for my purpose. Thanks!

What version of laravel are you using? Have you looked at previous versions of laravel-dompdf to find a release that would work with your versions?

Version 0.1.0 for laravel 4 required php 5.3, so you might be able to find a release that fits your versions.

@36864 - Laravel 5.0. I remember playing around with different versions but a good idea to go back and take a closer look. Not sure I want to revert to Laravel 4.

@Sofia https://github.com/barryvdh/laravel-dompdf/releases/tag/v0.6.1 seems to support Laravel 5.0 and php 5.4, according to the composer.json file.

Thanks @36864 (and @CodebyRay) for the forward nudges!

Installation of v.0.6.1 was OK (Yay!), but having some challenges with rendering the PDFs.

Will report back when I can dedicate some time to investigating the issues.

Should work with Vue, right? Update: Doesn't look like it :(

Hi Guys,

Is there anyway generated PDF file(from a Laravel View) can be saved in the database?

That's what I am doing right now. I want to save it to the database.

view()->share('lab',$data);
    $pdf = PDF::loadView('lab.test');
    return $pdf->download('test_'. $request['Id'] . '_lab.pdf');

@HAJROVICA - @hajrovica, can you share how you got php-pdftk to install in Laravel? I installed it using composer, and it shows up under vendors, but my controller is not recognizing it, saying "Class 'Vendor\mikehaertl\pdftk\Pdf' not found". I'm using Laravel 5.5 and have installed PDftk on my system as required. Not sure what I'm missing.

Can you please help?

@hondaman900 Hi as i recall nothing specific was needed to install php-pdftk Pulled it with composer

used it in standard way: use mikehaertl\pdftk\Pdf;

can you share your code? also do composer selfupdate Check is your name space ok - i am not sure should it say Class 'Vendor\mikehaertl\pdftk\Pdf' not found or should it be Class 'mikehaertl\pdftk\Pdf' not found?

@sofia why dont just generate pdf on the fly and mail it to customer without being downloaded it on server.

I did similar for invoice, fetch the invoice data from db pass it to view and generate pdf with ( Images) and mail it to customer.

No need to save it no server