Question

Short

What I want to do is, to prepare PHP generated result for print with strong rules.

Tried all possible ways with css+html: set dimensions in px, mm, cm.
Nothing helped. Each browser, even each printer printed absolutely different paper results (tried both with & w/o border print. also didn’t get result). After long research, found that CSS is not best way for this purpose and better way – to use pdf creation functionality with PHP. So, installed TCPDF. But can’t get it work with logical part that I created for HTML output.

What I want to get

• Table’s first and last rows’ margin from top and bottom sides of paper must be 11 mm
• Margin between rows’ 0 mm
• Table’s rows must be at 4 mm from left and right sides of paper
• 2 mm between every column
• 38 mm width x 21.2 mm height each cell
• 13 x rows, 5 x columns, 13×5=65 cells
• Each table in new page. In other words – after each table page break
• In each cell Code 39 Barcode (value must be $id)
• Only tables in PDF result – no header, no footer, no title … etc

Here is more detailed explanation on image:

What I’m getting

After form submission, processing in php side takes too long – about minute and opens blank page instead of PDF result.

Code:

(Code is not so huge, comments are making it look like so:)

<?php
require_once('tcpdf/config/lang/eng.php');
require_once('tcpdf/tcpdf.php');

// create new PDF document
$pdf = new TCPDF(PDF_PAGE_ORIENTATION, PDF_UNIT, PDF_PAGE_FORMAT, true, 'UTF-8', false);

$pdf->SetPrintHeader(false);
$pdf->SetPrintFooter(false);
// set document information
$pdf->SetCreator(PDF_CREATOR);
$pdf->SetAuthor('John Smith');
$pdf->SetTitle(false);
$pdf->SetSubject(false);
$pdf->SetKeywords(false);

// set default header data.set all false because don't want to output header footer
$pdf->SetHeaderData(false, false, false, false);

// set header and footer fonts
$pdf->setHeaderFont(Array(PDF_FONT_NAME_MAIN, '', PDF_FONT_SIZE_MAIN));
$pdf->setFooterFont(Array(PDF_FONT_NAME_DATA, '', PDF_FONT_SIZE_DATA));

// set default monospaced font
$pdf->SetDefaultMonospacedFont(PDF_FONT_MONOSPACED);

//set margins
$pdf->SetMargins(4, 11, 4);
$pdf->SetHeaderMargin(PDF_MARGIN_HEADER);
$pdf->SetFooterMargin(PDF_MARGIN_FOOTER);

//set auto page breaks
$pdf->SetAutoPageBreak(TRUE, PDF_MARGIN_BOTTOM);

//set image scale factor
$pdf->setImageScale(PDF_IMAGE_SCALE_RATIO);

//set some language-dependent strings
$pdf->setLanguageArray($l);

// ---------------------------------------------------------
// set font
$pdf->SetFont('helvetica', '', 10);

// add a page
$pdf->AddPage();

// define barcode style
$style = array(
    'position' => '',
    'align' => 'C',
    'stretch' => false,
    'fitwidth' => true,
    'cellfitalign' => '',
    'border' => true,
    'hpadding' => 'auto',
    'vpadding' => 'auto',
    'fgcolor' => array(0, 0, 0),
    'bgcolor' => false, //array(255,255,255),
    'text' => true,
    'font' => 'helvetica',
    'fontsize' => 8,
    'stretchtext' => 4
);

ob_start();
?>



<style type="text/css">

    table { 

        width: 100%;          

        border-collapse: collapse;

    }

    td img {
        height:10mm;
    }

    td {
        padding: 0 1mm 0 1mm;
        vertical-align:middle;              
    }

    .cell {
        width: 38mm;
        height:21mm;
        font-style: bold;
        text-align: center; 
    }

    tr    { 
        height:21mm;
        margin:0;
        padding:0;            
    }


</style>

<?php

$i = 0;
$item = new item($db);
foreach ($_POST['checkbox'] as $id) {
    $details = $item->getDetails($id);
    $qt = (isset($_POST['qt'])) ? $_POST['qt'] : $details['qt'];
    for ($cnt = 1; $cnt <= $qt; $cnt++) {
        // check if it's the beginning of a new table
        if ($i % 65 == 0)
            echo '<table>';

        // check if it's the beginning of a new row
        if ($i % 5 == 0)
            echo '<tr>';

        echo '<td><div class="cell">www.fety.fr<br/>';
        $pdf->Cell(0, 0, 'CODE 39 - ANSI MH10.8M-1983 - USD-3 - 3 of 9', 0, 1);
        $pdf->write1DBarcode($id, 'C39', '', '', '', 18, 0.4, $style, 'N');
        $pdf->Ln();
        echo '<br/>' . $details['hcode'] . '</div></td>';

        // check if it's the end of a row
        if (($i + 1) % 5 == 0)
            echo '</tr>';

        // check if it's the end of a table
        if (($i + 1) % 65 == 0)
            echo '</tr></table>';

        $i++;
    }
}

// if the last table isn't full, print the remaining cells
if ($i % 65 != 0) {
    for ($j = $i % 65; $j < 65; $j++) {
        if ($j % 65 == 0)
            echo '<table>';
        if ($j % 5 == 0)
            echo '<tr>';
        echo '<td></td>';
        if (($j + 1) % 5 == 0)
            echo '</tr>';
        if (($j + 1) % 65 == 0)
            echo '</table>';
    }
}

$markup = ob_get_clean();

// output the HTML content
$pdf->writeHTML($markup, true, false, true, false, '');



// reset pointer to the last page
$pdf->lastPage();

// ---------------------------------------------------------
//Close and output PDF document
$pdf->Output('bcsheet.pdf', 'I');
?>

Script works like that:

1. User selects items’ checkboxes
2. After form submission, PHP gets values of checked checkboxes via Ajax
3. In foreach loop, PHP gets quantities of each item from database.
4. Generated table

Answer 1

here is an html/css to pdf converter library http://www.mpdf1.com/mpdf/

This has it’s own html/css parser and thus will yield the same result in all browser.

<?php

$html = '
    <html>
    <head>
    <style>
        table {
        width: 100%;
            border-collapse: collapse;
        }       
        tr {

        }
        td {
            width: 38mm;
            height: 21.2mm;
            margin: 0 1mm;
            text-align: center;
            vertical-align:middle; 
        }
    </style>
    </head>
    <body>
    <table>';

    for ($i = 0; $i < 13; $i++)
    {
        $html .= '<tr>';
        for($j = 0; $j < 5; $j++)
        {
            $html .= '<td><barcode code="TEC-IT" type="C39" class="barcode" /></td>';
        }
        $html .= '</tr>';
    }       

$html .= '</table>
    </body>
    </html>';

    include("MPDF53/mpdf.php");

    $mpdf = new mPDF('c', 'A4', '', '', 4, 4, 10.7, 10.7, 0, 0);

    $mpdf->SetDisplayMode('fullpage');

    $mpdf->list_indent_first_level = 0;

    $mpdf->WriteHTML($html,0);

    $mpdf->Output('test.pdf','I');
    exit;

?>