html to pdf (not pdf to html) in php

Question

I am a php web developer and in my one project i need to convert some html document (of 30 to 50 pages) into pdf .

For this I got following some solutions, among them some are php libraries and some are command line applications.

But each has their own advantage and disadvantage.

php libraries: Followings are some php libraries i tried.

1. fpdf (need more effort to convert)
2. tcpdf (need more effort to convert)
3. html2fpdfhtml2fpdf dot sourceforge dot net
4. html2pdf html2pdf dot fr/
5. dompdf code dot google dot com/p/dompdf/ (compared to other working good)

For each library have problem like:

1. Takes long time for conversion process (more than 5min to conert 30 html pages)

2. Need more resorce (memory and time)

   (on my machine i set following parameter in php.ini file: max_execution_time = 600 memory_limit = 250M

   but still not work.)

3. need html pages in well formated (no missing html close tag otherwise gives error)

But when i try all these libraries to convert simple html of 5 or less pages with less css , all works.

Command line application

For command line application , i want to say that all works perfectly and very fast as compared to all above libraries only when i run it directly on console. but when i try to use them in php with exec() or system() function ,gives error.

Following are these command line application and there errors when I run them in php

html2pdf : http://www.tufat.com/s%5Fhtml2ps%5Fhtml2pdf.htm

gives error: html2pdf:11380): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: :0.0

No protocol specified

wkhtmltopdf :

gives error

Loading page: 10%
Loading page: 33%
Loading page: 100%
Waiting for redirect
Outputting pages
QPainter::begin(): Returned false QPainter::begin(): Returned false QPainter::save: Painter not active QPainter::scale: Painter not active QPainter::setRenderHint: Painter must be active to set rendering hints QPainter::setBrush: Painter not active QPainter::pen: Painter not active QPainter::setPen: Painter not active

htmltopdf : www dot ultrashareware dot com/html-to-pdf.htm

So now I am looking for help.

Can any one answer:

Which php library work good in my case?

Why this errors occur in command line applications?

Answer 1

But what if You will use any online service and send Your HTML content over HTTP? Of course most of them are not free.

Answer 2

One possibility: having the script automatically:

1. Take the web page
2. Open that page in a web browser
3. Take a screencap of that page
4. Turn it into a PDF

step 4 is easy - there are plenty of PHP/cmdline libraries that will let you put images onto a pdf or convert them (eg, fpdf.)

For steps 1-3... you might could try looking at the code from here: http://browsershots.org/. Not sure if it would be relevant - it seems like it requires a lot of setup. Maybe their architecture could work?

Answer 3

A couple of questions and suggestions:

• Do you really need it converted to PDF? Why? In some cases, it would be better to stick with HTML.
• Is upgrading the hardware of the server that generates the PDF an option? I asked this because if all the libraries that you've tried is taking too long to create, then your only option might be upgrading the server.
• You might want to solve the problem with the command line error. If it gives the fastest results, then find a work around it.

Answer 4

Regarding wkhtmltopdf:

• This thing works blazingly fast and it can also handle all kinds of HTML/CSS you throw at it, so when you need speed, you should seriosly consider it. We switch to it recently in our company and our PDF serving got enourmous speed-boost.

• At least under Linux it needs XOrg libraries to be installed - servers usually don't have them, so that might be your problem.

Answer 5

Try this:

• tecnick.com/public/code/cp_dpage.php?aiocp_dp=tcpdf_examples
• fpdf.org
• http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/

Answer 6

Have you tried Prince?