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Creating PDFs With Code Charge Studio PDF

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)

125 views8 pages

Creating PDFs With Code Charge Studio PDF

Uploaded by

Freddy Manullang

We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.

Available Formats

Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

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Creating PDF Documents with CodeCharge Studio

This document will provide you some insight into creating your own reports, output as PDF files, from
CodeCharge pages. Actually, the process works for any URL want to capture.
There is a very powerful set of functions available as GPL'd code. Most of what you need will be installed
and ready to go if your webserver is Linux. I set this up on a Fedora Core distribution from RedHat and it
was extremely easy. Only the outer "wrapper" from http://www.rustyparts.com was missing - everything
else is in the Fedora distribution.

What do you need?

The process described in this document takes HTML from any URL, but in particular, from a CCS "report"
page. The HTML is converted into PostScript, then the PostScript is converted into PDF. No Adobe
components are used, everything is public domain.
The shopping list of "parts" you need:
Linux/Unix
Apache httpd (bundled with Linux)
PEAR library (supports PHP: http://pear.php.com
Perl scripting language version 5 (bundled with Linux)
GhostScript PS to PDF converter (bundled with Linux)
HTML_2PDF PHP class module from http://www.rustyparts.com
html2ps perlscript from http://user.it.uu.se/~jan
Actually, all of these items are available for use on Windows 2000. I ran into numerous problems trying to
correctly define paths to all the scripts and executables. The documentation is quite thin and I was not able
to figure out why the PS to PDF convertor would not work from the script - it worked fine on it's own.
Rather than fight it, and the intended target server was Linux anyway, I quit trying to get it to work on
Windows 2000.
HTML_2PDF actually implements several options for inputting HTML. I used the "from an external URL"
method, which meant I could create the report however I wanted it to look, by designing a page in CCS,
then let the HTML_2PDF script scrape that page to get the data. This also means you can direct it at any
URL on the WWW and save the page as a PDF file!

Hooking it up to CodeCharge Studio

Typically a report requires parameters: date ranges, customer number, etc. So it's not enough to just give
the script a URL. I wrote a simple report configuration front-end. The reports I needed required a small set
of parameters (about 5 different ones). So I created a table to store the report URL as a string, and then
added 5 boolean columns to indicate which parameters were needed. The Report form contains 5 sets of
data fields, and these are either hidden or visible depending on whether the report needs them.
Users run reports by selecting the name, This causes the appropriate list of parameters to be requested.
Code in the "Submit" button's Server OnClick event. This event assembles the parameters from the form,
instantiates and invokes the object implemented by HTML_2PDF. This creates the report and stores it in a
folder on the webserver. A table stores report descriptions and the URL where the report was filed. This
let's users retrieve them via their web browser.
Here's a screen shot of the report interface for users.

© 2004, Donald N. Bevis for GoToDon.com

Permission is granted to distribute freely as long as this copyright notice is retained in it's entirety
without modification. Ownership of this document remains with the copyright holder. Improvements or
corrections are welcomed. See http://www.GoToDon.Com/ccbth for contact information. This document is
available for download from the aforementioned location
Creating PDF Documents with CodeCharge Studio

The code called by the Run Report button is shown below. It is mostly unchanged from the example
provided at rustyparts.com. I just pasted it into the event code-file for my report page.

Creating the Reports

This is the really easy part. The reports have to conform to the above-listed parameters (at least thr my
application). Beyond that, the report is anything you want it to be. I created reports as regular CCS pages
with grids or record controls. The one thing to remember is that you can't use a Navigator to paginate your
report - it has to be output in one continuous stream. So page breaks are not going to be automatically
inserted. This is a simple report mechanism. I probably would use a dedicated report-generator if I wanted
really sophisticated output, with headers, footers, pagination, grouping and so on. But for simple things
like printing invoices or other small reports, it is a good fit. You can put code into the Before Show Row
event to insert a page break and/or header every "n" lines and do a reasonably good job of pagination.
By default the conversion script converts everything in the specified URL - including buttons, textboxes or
other controls. I edited my copy of the script in a couple places to not render the outlines of textboxes and
to skip buttons. This made a better looking report for my application.

Report-execution function called from Event handler

When setting up the PDF conversion, it is helpful to set $pdf->setDebug(true); to have t display on-screen
all the conversion steps and their final outcomes.

© 2004, Donald N. Bevis for GoToDon.com

// Invoke the HTML_2PDF conversion obtained from

http://www.rustyparts.com
function run_report($pdfFile, $htmlFile, $defaultDomain)
{

// require the class

require_once dirname('__FILE__') .'/reports/pdf/HTML_ToPDF-custom.php';

// remove old one, just to make sure we are making it afresh

@unlink($pdfFile);

$pdf =& new HTML_ToPDF($htmlFile, $defaultDomain, $pdfFile);

$pdf->setTmpDir(dirname('__FILE__') .'/reports/pdf/tmp/');

// Control the output of additional debug information

$pdf->setDebug(false); // When 'true' this dumps tracing info to the
browser while the conversion to PDF executes

// set that we do want to use the page's css

$pdf->setUseCSS(true);
// give it our own css, in this case it will make it so
// the lines are double spaced
$pdf->setAdditionalCSS('
p {
line-height: 1.8em;
font-size: 12pt;
}');
// don't want to underline hyperlinks
$pdf->setUnderlineLinks(false);
// scale the page down slightly, just seems to fit the page better
$pdf->setScaleFactor('.9');
// make the page black and light
$pdf->setUseColor(false);

© 2004, Donald N. Bevis for GoToDon.com

// convert the HTML file to PDF

$result = $pdf->convert();
// PDFs are created and owned by "apache", let the users access them by
this chmod, chown
if (file_exists($pdfFile)) {
chmod($pdfFile, 0777);
// chown($pdfFile, 'nobody');
}

// check if the result was an error

return PEAR::isError($result);

Event code for the "Run Report" button

This simply gathers data from the form, assembles the complete URL for running the report, generates a
filename (in this instance a path to the folder "uploads". The application incorporated a fileupload function
and so reports were designed to be stored in the same folder and listed in the same "directory" (CCS grid)
with all the uploaded files.

© 2004, Donald N. Bevis for GoToDon.com

//reports_Button_Run_OnClick @19-E856C3FF
function reports_Button_Run_OnClick()
{
$reports_Button_Run_OnClick = true;
//End reports_Button_Run_OnClick

//Custom Code @33-A43F7AC2

// -------------------------
global $reports;
global $Redirect;

//
$hostdomain = "localhost"; // Change this if the reports
are not on a different server

// Invoke the report-generator object to produce the PDF copy of our

report URL

// The list of POST parameters here must correspond to each of the form
fields that accept user input
// By convention, all .php report files are designed to recognize
parameters
// by the names cid, pid, yr,st and en
$sep = "?";
$temp = CCGetFromPost("cid","0");
if ($temp !== "0") {
$params = $params . $sep . "cid=" . $temp;
$sep = "&";
}

$temp = CCGetFromPost("List_Ppty","0");
if ($temp !== "0") {
$params = $params . "&pid=" . $temp;
$sep = "&";
}

© 2004, Donald N. Bevis for GoToDon.com

$temp = CCGetFromPost("Text_Year","0000");
if ($temp !== "0") {
$params = $params . "&yr=" . $temp;
$sep = "&";
}

$temp = CCGetFromPost("Text_From","0000");
if ($temp !== "0") {
$params = $params . "&st=" . $temp;
$sep = "&";
}

$temp = CCGetFromPost("Text_To","0000");
if ($temp !== "0") {
$params = $params . "&en=" . $temp;
$sep = "&";
}

// Determine where the output file will be stored

$rptpath = "/uploads/" . CCGetParam("cid","0") . "/";

// Create the output filename based on the reportname field

$filename = $reports->reportname->GetValue() . ".pdf";

// Ensure the file does not exist, append a number to it until we

create a unique file name
// This is the same algorithm as used by the FileUpload class

$file_exists = true;
$index = 0;
while($file_exists) {
$ActualFileName = dirname(__FILE__) . $rptpath . date("YmdHis") .
$index . "." . $filename;

$last_report_URL = ServerURL . $rptpath . date("YmdHis") .

$index . "." . $filename;
$last_report_file = date("YmdHis") . $index . "." . $filename;
$file_exists = file_exists($ActualFileName);
$index++;
}

$output_file = $ActualFileName;

$report_URL = $reports->new_URL->GetValue();

// Construction the URL of the report to be run by combining the URI

of the report with the query parameters
if (strcasecmp(substr($report_URL,1,5),"http:") == 0) {

}
else {
// Construct a URL from various parts

if (substr($report_URL,1,1) !== "/") {

$report_URL = "/" . $report_URL;
}
$report_URL = ServerURL . "reports" . $report_URL . ".php"
. $params;
}

// Produce the report

run_report($output_file, $report_URL, $hostdomain);
//
// Determine whether the report ran correctly or not
if (file_exists($output_file)) {
// Temporarily store the filename and callback this php page with
a parameter so it displays the "reportlog" form
CCSetSession("last_report_path",$output_file);
CCSetSession("last_report_URL",$last_report_URL);

CCSetSession("last_report_file",$last_report_file);