EXT: PDF Generator 2¶

What does it do?¶

If the user wants to print a document document served by typo3 he is usually offered a HTML page that contains only the relevant content of the page while the images are served asseparatefiles. This works fine for printing, but if the user wants to save the page for archiving or offline printing it would be nice to embedthe images within only one document. Adobe Acrobat PDF offers a suitable file format for thatpurposewhich is widely and os-independently supported.

This extension is based on the pdf_generator but uses a different html to pdf converter.

How does it work?¶

The extension generates a “printer-friendly” HTML-page internally. This page is passed through html2pdf to generatea PDFfile. ThePDFfile is then served to the user whilebeingcached by the usual caching mechanism of typo3.

The PDF page can be linked to from the Typoscript template using the stdWrap.postUserFunc parameter. Either dynamic Filenames (i.e. Index.php?id=12&type=123) or static (<alias>.PDF of 12.pdf) filenames are supported.

What is html2pdf?¶

Html2pdf s a 100% php based script that converts html including css to pdf (and alternatively to postscript which is not supported here). Unlike the htmldoc based solution css is supported and no external binaries are required.

It uses either the fpdf or the pdflib library to perform the rendering. Both methods give slightly different result both regarding rendering speed and rendering results. If you want to use pdflib you'll have to install additional fonts.

File Based Caching¶

If you do not want to store large generated files in the database, you can use the additional extension file_based_cache which will cache large files in the filesystem instead.

Install the Extension¶

Download the newest Extension using the Extension Manager/Extension Repository

Install the Extension using the Extension Manager

Configure the Extension.

install additional fonts for pdflib (sometime they are also needed for fpdf, i haven't found out when exactly yet. If you see an error message that a font can't be found, install them)

Update your .htaccess if you want to use “static” PDF filenames

You don't need to install the fpdf extension, the fpdf library is already included in this one.

Install additional fonts for PDFlib¶

If you want to use PDFlib you'll have to install additional fonts. This is most easily done by installing the pdf_generator2_fonts extension. They are packaged separately from the rest to keep the extension sizes manageable.

Update .htaccess¶

You will need to update your .htaccess if you want the links to your PDF files be static (i.e. <alias.pdf>). This change is necessaryto forward all requests to /<...>.PDF files to typo3's index.php.

ErrorDocument 404 /error.html
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule   ^typo3$  /typo3/index_re.php
RewriteRule   ^[^/]*\.html$  index.php
RewriteRule   ^[^/]*\.pdf$  index.php

Available Options¶

Add a link in your Typoscript Template using makePdfLink¶

To add the a link to the PDF page you can wrap any content element in a link using stdwrap.postUserFunc. The following code gives some examples:

[...]
100 = IMAGE
100.file = fileadmin/pdf_link.gif
100.stdWrap.postUserFunc = tx_pdfgenerator2->makePdfLink
[...]

[...]
110 = TEXT
110.value = printable version
110.postUserFunc = tx_pdfgenerator2->makePdfLink
110.postUserFunc.target = _blank
[...]

[...]
temp.PDF = TEXT
temp.PDF.value = pdf
temp.PDF.postUserFunc = tx_pdfgenerator2->makePdfLink
temp.PDF.postUserFunc.include_post_vars = 1

page.120 < temp.PRINT
[...]

If you use the Template Auto-Parser extension and you want to put the link somewhere on your page, you may need to put it in a COA with another element. If you want to place it below the content for example you would change

subparts.content < styles.content.get

to something like

subparts.content = COA
subparts.content {
  10 = CONTENT
  10 < styles.content.get
  20 < temp.PDF
}

and define temp.PDF like above.

Please note that the link will be generated as a USER_INT object by default, i.e. that the link will be generated after the page has been pulled from the cache. If you want to go for maximum performance you can disable that with the parameter postUserFunc.no_user_int = 1 which will generate and cache the link. This is only recommended if you are sure that there are no USER_INT objects on the page that set POST or GET parameters. If you don't understand what i'm writing about leave it at default.

Add a link in your Typoscript Template using openPdfLink¶

Altenatively you can also use the function tx_pdfgenerator2->openPdfLink which will generate the opening tag for the link. You will need to generate the closing </a> tag yourself´. Example:

page.36= USER_INT
page.36.userFunc = tx_pdfgenerator2->openPdfLink

page.37=TEXT
page.37.value = Link to PDF

page.38=HTML
page.38.value = </a>

Add a link in your Typoscript Template using getPdfTarget¶

If you just need the target of the pdf link you can use the function getPdfTarget. Amongst other things this can be useful with templavoila. Example:

lib.pdflink = USER_INT
lib.pdflink.userFunc = tx_pdfgenerator2->getPdfTarget
lib.pdflink.userFunc.include_post_vars = 1

Customizing the PDF-Page via Typoscript¶

The PDF is rendered based on a very simple template. You can easily update the pdf_generator page object to contain additional information or content elements on every PDF page. One especially interesting use is to add special HTML comments to control the behavior of the html2pdf conversion. See the html2pdf documentation (on http://www.tufat.com/docs/html2ps/index.html ) for details. A lot of parameters can be set via the Constant Editor (see next chapter).

:underline:`You don't have to put any of the following lines into your template, they are already there. They are noted here just for reference purposes.`

     pdf_generator = PAGE
 pdf_generator {
    typeNum = {$extension.pdf_generator.typeNum}
     config.pageGenScript = EXT:pdf_generator/gen_pdf.php
     config.admPanel = 0
      config.xhtml_cleaning = 0
config.USERNAME_substToken =
     config.ftu = 0
   config.disableCharsetHeader = 1
  config.prefixLocalAnchors = 0

   50 = CONTENT
     50 < styles.content.get
     }

Customizing the PDF-Page via the Constant Editor¶

You can set several options on a per-template basis with the Constant Editor. These options will result in parameters used for the html2pdf conversion. The following parameters can be set:

Reference for tx_pdfgenerator2->makePdfLink, tx_pdfgenerator2->openPdfLink and tx_pdfgenerator2->getPdfTarget¶

Note that not all properties make sense for all functions. For example: the getPdfTarget function doesn't support the Target property.

Content-Type: application/pdf
Content-Disposition: inline

Content-Type: application/pdf
Content-Disposition: attachment

Content-Type: application/octet-stream
Content-Disposition: attachment

Special Tags¶

You can force a page break by inserting any one of the following commands into the HTML page:

<!--NewPage-->
<pagebreak/>
<?page-break>

It is highly NOT RECOMMENDED to use these directives inside table cells, as you can get unpredictable results.

The following command performs a “section” break”.

<sectionbreak/>

Elements that are positioned fixed (i.e. on all pages), will only show up in the section they are declared in. Basically the body tag is split at the points where this command is found, the split up parts are then inserted in the original body tag again, thereby forming several new html-documents. If you keep this in mind, you'll also understand that tis command should only show up in places that are at the level below the body tag, otherwise you'll get unpredictable results

Special Fields¶

The following fields are rendered if the render fields checkbox in the constant editor is checked (default):

gen_pdf.php¶

This is the main script that generates the PDF file. This is done by calling the original pagegen script and then passing it to the html2pdf conversion script. The generated PDF is then returned to typo3 to be cached for subsequent requests. This script also “fixes” the following issues with the generated HTML:

Sometimes the RTE generates <P> tags within <PRE> tags. They are removed

When using buletted lists the output is theoretically correct but looks quite ugly (the dots are quite a bit above the text line. By changing the alignment of the images to left they look much better.

class.tx_pdfgenerator2.php¶

This class contains the makePdfLink function that is used to generate the link to the PDF file. It takes the current page id and all attached GET parameters and creates a new link using these values. If the simulateStaticPdf option is set these links will be named <alias>.pdf?<additional parameters>. if not they will be called index.php?id=<id>&type=<pdf_type>&<additional parameters>.

class.ux_tslib_fe.php¶

This class extends/overrides the core tslib_fe class. Two functions are overridden in typo3 <3.7. In typo3 3.7 and above callbacks are used instead:

checkAlternativeIdMethods

This change will check for a “.pdf” file ending and automatically generate the pageType for the PDF page (default:123)

processOutput

This change will check if a PDF file is currently generated and will add the additionally needed headers then. These include

• Content-Type and Content-Dispositionsee Reference for postUserFunc = tx_pdfgenerator2->makePdfLink

• Cache-control: private, Connection: Keep-AliveThese are need for Internet Explorer to allow downloadingof the file and to avoid IE requesting it twice.

• Content-Length: <calculated length>

  This is also needed to avoid the need to press Refresh on IE when working with small PDF files.

Additionally the gzip compression is turned off here by setting the ['FE']['compressionlevel'] to ''.

((generated))¶