Going One Step Further - PHP

As you know, more and more web sites try to engage their visitors by delivering their database contents in several formats, such as Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF). The good news regarding this topic is that you, as a PHP developer, can take advantage of this language’s versatility and get started quickly building PDF files directly from your own scripts.

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By: Alejandro Gervasio

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November 27, 2007

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Going one step further in using the “show_xy()” method: displaying a block of text at a different position

As I anticipated in the section that you just read, the best way to grasp how the “show_xy()” method works consists of creating a certain number of examples, which will help you see how useful it can be to display several blocks of text using a pair of X,Y coordinates.

Based upon this premise, below I included another hands-on example. It shows how to position a determined string within a given PDF document, using the pertinent “show_xy()” method. The corresponding code sample is as follows:

try{

// example creating a basic PDF document and display a
basic text using the 'show_xy()' method

// create new instance of the 'PDFlib' class

$pdf=new PDFlib();

// open new PDF file

if(!$pdf->begin_document("","")){

throw new PDFlibException("Error creating PDF document. ".$pdf-
>get_errmsg());

}

$pdf->set_info("Creator","example.php");

$pdf->set_info("Author","Alejandro Gervasio");

$pdf->set_info("Title","Example on using PHP to create PDF
docs");

$pdf->begin_page_ext(421,595,"");

$font=$pdf->load_font("Helvetica-Bold","winansi","");

$pdf->setfont($font,24.0);

$pdf->show_xy("PHP is great for creating PDFs!",30,300);

// end page

$pdf->end_page_ext("");

// end document

$pdf->end_document("");

// get buffer contents

$buffer=$pdf->get_buffer();

// get length of buffer

$len=strlen($buffer);

// display PDF document

header("Content-type: application/pdf");

header("Content-Length: $len");

header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=example.pdf");

echo $buffer;

}

catch (PDFlibException $e){

echo 'Error Number:'.$e->get_errnum()."n";

echo 'Error Message:'.$e->get_errmsg();

exit();

}

In this particular case, I used the handy “show_xy()” method to display a sample text on a previously opened PDF file, utilizing a new pair of X,Y coordinates, which should speak for itself about the remarkable functionality of the method in question.

In addition, bearing in mind that the prior example would be rather incomplete if its corresponding output isn’t shown, below I included a screen shot that depicts the results displayed by the example:

The previous screen shot demonstrates how simple it is to display a sample text in a given PDF file using the handy “show_xy()” method. In this case, this text has been placed using an X offset of 30, while the respective X value is 300. Quite easy to grasp, right?

Well, now that you hopefully understood the basics in using the prior “show_xy()” method, I’m going to develop a final example that utilizes this method, in this way completing its practical demonstration.

As you might have guessed, to see how this final hands-on example will be properly built, you’ll have to click on the link below and read the next few lines. We’re almost finished!

Next: Completion >>