Question

I am working on improving a daily tasks which could be sped up if what I need exists. It could save me about 2 hours of work a day if it can be done. My current way of generating reports is long. Here is my current flow.

1. I click generate report and the report is automatically generated using PHP, CSS, & HTML.

2. I work on a Mac, so in order to save the report as a PDF, I click on “print”. The print window appears and I then click on “Save As PDF”.

3. I save this report to my desktop. I then upload it to my server.

The 3 steps above is my current process. What I would like to be able to do is this:

1. I click generate report and the report is automatically generated using PHP, CSS, & HTML.

2. If the report looks good, I click on “save”. The save button will automatically generate a PDF and will upload it to my server.

Is this possible? If so, can someone point me in the right direction. I prefer to do this with PHP, but if there’s another way I can do this, that is fine as well.

Answer 1

If you’d like to learn how to do this, and well, there are great resources available to you.

In fact, Welling/Thomson’s PHP and MySQL Web Development has two chapters that are perfect you. Chapter 19 deals with files and Chapter 32 is entitled “Generating Personalized PDF Documents.” I recommend you give it a thorough read.

If you encounter problems along the way, then you should come back here and post them in discrete components.