I have created a rrdcgi script to display information about the system performance with graphs. Now I would like to add an option for the users to create PDF on the fly with the details on current page (images and information) and header and footer. I also want the generated PDF files to be saved in some location so that that can be easily accessed next time. Is this possible to do with rrdcgi or any Perl code would be really appreciated.
I need this options
Is it worth the effort?
Why don't you add a FAQ explaining how to setup a PDF-printer on Windows/MAC/Linux and provide a 'clean' page that can then be printed?
Since you apparently have to create the PDF,
You need to consider what you want to put in the PDF: Do you want an exact replica of the web page the user is viewing (too hard to be close to impossible without having the user's browser installed on your side and using its print output) or do you want the same information in a roughly similar layout?
An important issue is how you are generating the HTML: I did something similar once to generate PDF receipts for experiment participants (now, I just output HTML with print styles).
The HTML is generated using HTML::Template although Template.pm would be just as fine.
It is then trivial to write another template, one that generates a LATEX document which can be processed using pdflatex. If you save the data the time the snapshot is requested, you can add the snapshot to a queue that generates documents asynchronously so that requests do not tie up the web server.
Update: Looking at rrdcgi, I now realize that it already does use a template. That is perfect: Instead of putting HTML in the template, put LATEX code in the template and run rrdcgi with the --filter option to create a LATEX source file which you can run through pdflatex. I guess the problem to solve there is to be able to use the exact same data that was used to generate the page the user is looking at.
If it is not possible to re-run rrdcgi with the exact same data, consider adding some JavaScript that submits the HTML source of the page the user is reviewing (or some JSON representation thereof) to a CGI script that parses the HTML and outputs LATEX. Writing clean HTML in the original template and judicious use of class and id attributes would help there.
I do not have time to test any of these ideas right now, but I will take a look again within the next couple of days.
Regarding the LaTeX route, if you have rrdcgi generate graphs in pdf format, pdflatex will be able to integrate them directly into the document, producing super quality pdf with graphs ... very slick. Sorry, no code.