ActivePDF-like Reports w/ Apache?

Martin71a asks: "I have recently been tasked with managing our website. I come from a mainframe and VB background and have a team of 3 people to work with. Our manager is having us switch from IIS to an Apache web server later this year. In the more immediate future, I need a solution to distribute print to our customers through our website. Previously, we had developed our reports using HTML, but we need more professional looking reports with more basic printing functionality, such as paging, built in. We have been testing ActivePDF in which we develop the reports in Crystal then use ActivePDF to send [those reports] to a virtual PDF printer, which allows the user to view them. We like the solution because it doesn't require our customer to download anything, other than a PDF viewer. We've also experimented with Crystal Enterprise, although it was an older version that required either a Java plug-in, or ActiveX download. My concern is that AcitvePDF does not appear to be supported for an Apache server. Does any know of a similar solution that would be appropriate for an Apache server?"

Comments

PHP + PDF generation

[DamienMcKenna]

Use PHP for your report generation and use its PDFlib support to output the final result to a PDF file, which you then shuffle off to the user. Et voila!

Damien

Re:PHP + PDF generation

[BoomerSooner]

My problem is finding a server that will populate the pre-drawn PDF form fields like ActivePDF. Until I can just Call objPDF.SetFormField("fieldName", value, 0) like in ActivePDF I'm stuck as well.

Anyone know something that does that and flattens remaining form fields (to limit size)?

PHP + FPDF

[octover]

http://www.fpdf.org/ it is a completely contained PDF system for PHP. I haven't used it a lot but I've heard it is a lot more sane to use than PDF Lib plus it doesn't require you to compile in the library.

Re:PHP + FPDF

[tweder]

I have used about every PDF library for PHP under the sun, so here's my $0.02.

pdflib - SUCKS, the API is a pain in the ass. I liken it to doing your own dental work -- in the dark. You can circumvent this a little using the pc4p wrapper, but it's fickle.

fpdf - It's pretty good, although it doesn't natively support any sane ways of dealing with text in tables - I was trying to use it to generate PDF invoices and quotations. It would barf and break columns when my text should wrap to the next line. The only way around this would be writing custom extensions to the class.

r&os - This is what I really recommend using. Like fpdf, it doesn't require any additional libraries to be installed - everything runs within PHP itself. The documentation is pretty good and I've really enjoyed using it.

Re:PHP + FPDF

[Phil John]

I agree with the r&os idea, however, if you are going to be producing bajilions of pdf's dynamically you're going to want a beefy server. If, on the other hand, you are simply delivering xxx copies of the same PDF you can use PHP's output buffering and cache the whole thing:

ob_start();
-do pdf creation and output here-
$pdfcontents=ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
$fp=fopen("/path/to/pdf/file.pdf","w[b]");
fwrite($pdfcontents);
fclose($fp);

You only need the b in the fopen if you are running php/apache on windows as a file needs to be explicitly binary on that platform.

try this

[farmy4700]

You might look into Stellent, we started using it here at my office and it works pretty good.

PDF's in Apache? No problem

[toygeek]

There are tons of Perl, PHP, and other packages out there for creating PDF files from some sort of input. I found everything you'd need here at http://sourceforge.net/search/. Just do a search for "PDF" like I did. I *know* you'll find something there. Sourceforge.net and google.com are your friends! Hope this helps!

Same Problem

[justanyone]

I work at a large bank. We had reports we needed to produce in PDF format with nice graphics. We tried many solutions including print-to-HTML from Excel, Crystal Reports, Ephiphany, and Insightful's S-Plus.

The best solution for a compact format was a scripted solution (VBA / COM) that prints XLS, DOC, PPT, etc. to a file with thus creating a postscript file, then using ghostscript to convert .ps to .pdf, then moving the files to a Solaris Apache webserver.

S-Plus required lots of programming and display was not compact enough. Ephiphany likewise. Crystal has a HUGE HUGE IMMENSE VAST WAY-BIG Learning curve and still didn't do what we wanted. Alas.

For all it's worth.
-- Kevin J. Rice, justanyone.com

Apache FOP

[mapMonkey]

Take a look at Apache FOP, although your starting documents would have to be XML. The pros: buzzword compliant, and the project has a name similar to an old Soundgarden song!!

PDF, XML, Java

[fredrikr]

Take a look at Big Faceless Report Generator. The Big Faceless Report Generator is a Java component for converting XML to PDF documents. Using JSP, ASP or similar technology, you can now create dynamic PDF reports as quickly and easily as HTML.
Built on our popular Java PDF library, the Report Writer adds functionality including:

• HTML-style Tables - auto-sized nested tables with full control over padding, margins and borders
• Use cascading CSS2 stylesheets to control look and feel
• Create inline graphs and charts with XML, direct from the database
• Includes a servlet and a servlet filter for simple generation of PDF's from XML or JSP pages.
• Auto pagination of content with page headers and footers
• Familiar HTML syntax - <a>, <ul>, <p>, <table>, <td> and so on - simpler and faster than FOP
• All the features of our PDF library - Unicode support, Encryption, TrueType fonts, Barcodes and more

FPDF

[ben_degonzague]

I've been using this for the past year and its worked great. I use it with apache, php and mysql. A department has begun using it for their reports and is very happy.

http://www.fpdf.org/

PHP+pdflatex

[marind]

I use a combination of PHP and pdflatex for report generation. I don't think there is a solution that gets you more "professional looking" output.

CSS

[TheTomcat]

Have you evaluated CSS for the output?

It's possible to switch "media" (from screen to print), and do absolute layout, without a second library.

No vector art, but for layout, it can be done.

S

mod_python and

[Lomby]

If I understand your requirements correctly, you may want to investigate the use of Python (in the form of Apache's mod_python) along with the ReportLab tools.
You can find a nice article detailing its usage here