PDFs with PHP part 1

This tutorial is intended for the PHP programmer who needs to incorporate PDF generation in a script without using external libraries such as PDFlib (often unavailable due to licensing restrictions or lack of funds). This tutorial will cover only the basics, which hopefully will give you a good start. PDF has a vast set of features and possibilities which can not be covered in a short tutorial. If you need more than what is covered here, you might want to look at some similar yet more complete solutions available, such as the excellent work done by Olivier Plathey on the FPDF class (http://fpdf.org), on which this tutorial is based. Of course, you may wish to take your own route and for that there is also the PDF reference (be warned: it’s 1,172 pages!) Basic familiarity with using PHP classes is assumed. Knowledge of PDF file structure is not required, as all references are explained.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

By: Zend

Poor Best

Rating:

/ 9

January 06, 2004

print this article

SEARCH DEV SHED

TOOLS YOU CAN USE

Overview
PDF files are, after all, just plain text files with specific markup syntax that describes what should happen to objects within the document, such as text and images. It follows that, armed with some PDF logic; anyone can create a PDF file. In this tutorial you will be shown the basic features of the PDF language, to enable you to put together your own PDF document.

Learning Objectives
At the end of this first part of the tutorial you should be able to put together a simple PDF class that can: