Programmatically Generate PDF from HTML on iPhone

Question

I am looking for a way to programmatically (in obj-c) generate a PDF file from a local html file. I am dynamically generating the html from user inputs, I need to create the PDF and send it to the user (via email). I am having difficulty with the PDF generation portion.

I have the code to create a PDF using CGPDFContextCreateWithURL but I am struggling with drawing the page using quartz.

I have searched extensively on SO as well as the internet to no avail.

Any help is much appreciated!

Answer 1

Why not use a WebService, send the HTML page to this and retrieve the PDF-file ?

That way you can use iTextSharp and C#, and you're done in about 2 minutes.
Plus (if you're evil) you can store and see all the data on your server.

Answer 2

have you seen this tutorial, it was helpful to me

http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/iphone-sdk-tutorials/10989-pdf-creation-tutorial.html

Answer 3

I haven't tried this myself so i have nothing to offer concrete but I'd have to imagine there has to be an easy way to do this on iPhone due to the imaging model. I'd look deeper into the documentation.

As to pushing back with the client that is up to you but there are probably multiple reasons for wanting to keep everything local. Frankly I would not be pleased at all to here from somebody I hired that he couldn't manage this particular task. So think long and hard about this push back. Oh even if you do push back a webserver is a poor choice. I'd go back a step further and investgate why you need something in HTML in the first place.

Answer 4

I've never tried this so I have no idea if it'll work, but how about loading the HTML into a UIWebView, and then make the view draw itself into a PDF context? E.g.

UIWebView *webview = [[UIWebView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(...)];
[webview loadHTMLString:html baseURL:...];

Then:

- (void)webViewDidFinishLoad:(UIWebView *)webview {
    CGPDFContextRef pdfContext = CGPDFContextCreateWithURL(...);
    [webview.layer drawInContext:pdfContext];
    ...
}