Many web applications using PDF documents for invoices, contracts and many other doc types. There are a few PHP classes which are able to create PDF documents online, one of them is TCPDF. This tutorial is about how-to use the TCPDF class while creating a simple invoice document. If you like to take a sneak peak on the result, check this website which generates the PDF Invoice document on the fly.

Why TCPDF and not some other PHP class?

TCPDF is based on the FPDF class, a very stable project written for PHP4. Since several years has TCPDF much more features than FPDF and is written for PHP5 (there is also a PHP4 version). The TCPDF has also some great documentation and of course examples for all important PDF jobs like:
WriteHTML and RTL support, Multiple columns, JavaScript and Forms, Bookmarks (Table of Content), Multicell complex alignment, Barcodes, Set PDF viewer display preferences, EPS/AI vectorial images and many more.

The Zend Framework has some PDF class too…

Yes right, the first plan was to write this tutorial about the Zend Framework, but after writing a few rows of code I’ve noticed that the PDF Class is missing some important functions, like the MultiCell, which is used to wrap multiple rows of text. It’s a required function which was suggested as the Zend_Pdf_Cell 2 years ago and didn’t find the way to the core version until now. I like the Zend Framework a lot but not for creating PDF documents, the PDF class is much too limited.

Okay let’s start the tutorial:

In this tutorial we create a PDF invoice including header logo, the invoice rows, an information box and some footer row.
In our code we include some PHP files, next we’ve created a small class extension to have a custom header/footer and some handy method which creates a text box.

require_once('tcpdf/config/lang/eng.php');
require_once('tcpdf/tcpdf.php');
 
class MYPDF extends TCPDF {
	public function Header() {
		$this->setJPEGQuality(90);
		$this->Image('logo.png', 120, 10, 75, 0, 'PNG', 'http://www.finalwebsites.com');
 
	}
	public function Footer() {
		$this->SetY(-15);
		$this->SetFont(PDF_FONT_NAME_MAIN, 'I', 8);
		$this->Cell(0, 10, 'finalwebsites.com - PHP Script Resource, PHP classes and code for web developer', 0, false, 'C');
	}
	public function CreateTextBox($textval, $x = 0, $y, $width = 0, $height = 10, $fontsize = 10, $fontstyle = '', $align = 'L') {
		$this->SetXY($x+20, $y); // 20 = margin left
		$this->SetFont(PDF_FONT_NAME_MAIN, $fontstyle, $fontsize);
		$this->Cell($width, $height, $textval, 0, false, $align);
	}
}

The header method has only two functions, one sets the image quality and the second will place an image (including hyperlink) on a defined place (x=120, Y=10, width=75). All coordinates are measured in Millimeters and the height for the image is calculated by the script. Inside the footer method we’re using some basic TCPDF methods to define the position, the font/style and the cell with the footer text. The third method (CreateTextBox) is just a group of TCPDF functions which makes it easier to place some text box into the PDF document. Note, the constant variable PDF_FONT_NAME_MAIN is defined inside the TCPDF config file, which is located inside the config directory.

The invoice header

The following code will create a TCPDF object with default values, the PDF meta data gets defined (author, title, etc.), a page is added and the invoice header with information is created using our custom text box method.

// create a PDF object
$pdf = new MYPDF(PDF_PAGE_ORIENTATION, PDF_UNIT, PDF_PAGE_FORMAT, true, 'UTF-8', false);
 
// set document (meta) information
$pdf->SetCreator(PDF_CREATOR);
$pdf->SetAuthor('Olaf Lederer');
$pdf->SetTitle('TCPDF Example');
$pdf->SetSubject('TCPDF Tutorial');
$pdf->SetKeywords('TCPDF, PDF, example, tutorial');
 
// add a page
$pdf->AddPage();
 
// create address box
$pdf->CreateTextBox('Customer name Inc.', 0, 55, 80, 10, 10, 'B');
$pdf->CreateTextBox('Mr. Tom Cat', 0, 60, 80, 10, 10);
$pdf->CreateTextBox('Street address', 0, 65, 80, 10, 10);
$pdf->CreateTextBox('Zip, city name', 0, 70, 80, 10, 10);
 
// invoice title / number
$pdf->CreateTextBox('Invoice #201012345', 0, 90, 120, 20, 16);
 
// date, order ref
$pdf->CreateTextBox('Date: '.date('Y-m-d'), 0, 100, 0, 10, 10, '', 'R');
$pdf->CreateTextBox('Order ref.: #6765765', 0, 105, 0, 10, 10, '', 'R');

Invoice Rows

Now we create the information about the products we like put into the PDF invoice. First we create some headers and than we use a foreach loop to output our $orders array.

// list headers
$pdf->CreateTextBox('Quantity', 0, 120, 20, 10, 10, 'B', 'C');
$pdf->CreateTextBox('Product or service', 20, 120, 90, 10, 10, 'B');
$pdf->CreateTextBox('Price', 110, 120, 30, 10, 10, 'B', 'R');
$pdf->CreateTextBox('Amount', 140, 120, 30, 10, 10, 'B', 'R');
 
$pdf->Line(20, 129, 195, 129);
 
// some example data
$orders[] = array('quant' => 5, 'descr' => '.com domain registration', 'price' => 9.95);
$orders[] = array('quant' => 3, 'descr' => '.net domain name renewal', 'price' => 11.95);
$orders[] = array('quant' => 1, 'descr' => 'SSL certificate 256-Byte encryption', 'price' => 99.95);
$orders[] = array('quant' => 1, 'descr' => '25GB VPS Hosting, 200GB Bandwidth', 'price' => 19.95);
 
$currY = 128;
$total = 0;
foreach ($orders as $row) {
	$pdf->CreateTextBox($row['quant'], 0, $currY, 20, 10, 10, '', 'C');
	$pdf->CreateTextBox($row['descr'], 20, $currY, 90, 10, 10, '');
	$pdf->CreateTextBox('$'.$row['price'], 110, $currY, 30, 10, 10, '', 'R');
	$amount = $row['quant']*$row['price'];
	$pdf->CreateTextBox('$'.$amount, 140, $currY, 30, 10, 10, '', 'R');
	$currY = $currY+5;
	$total = $total+$amount;
}
$pdf->Line(20, $currX+4, 195, $currX+4);

After the headers and after the list of invoice items we create a line. Inside the loop, we use the variable $currY to raise the Y coordinate by 5 for each new row. The row amount is calculated by PHP and also the total amount is raised inside the foreach loop.

Invoice footer and information

First we create a total row using the value from the variable $total we created before. After that row we have a MultiCell which can hold the payment conditions or just some other information. You can use HTML code in this cell as well, for example a link to your terms and conditions.

// output the total row
$pdf->CreateTextBox('Total', 20, $currX+5, 135, 10, 10, 'B', 'R');
$pdf->CreateTextBox('$'.number_format($total, 2, '.', ''), 140, $currX+5, 30, 10, 10, 'B', 'R');
 
// some payment instructions or information
$pdf->setXY(20, $currX+30);
$pdf->SetFont(PDF_FONT_NAME_MAIN, '', 10);
$pdf->MultiCell(175, 10, '<em>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit</em>. <br />
Vestibulum sagittis venenatis urna, in pellentesque ipsum pulvinar eu. In nec <a href="http://www.google.com/">nulla libero</a>, eu sagittis diam. Aenean egestas pharetra urna, et tristique metus egestas nec. Aliquam erat volutpat. Fusce pretium dapibus tellus.', 0, 'L', 0, 1, '', '', true, null, true);
 
//Close and output PDF document
$pdf->Output('test.pdf', 'F');

At the end we call the output method which will safe the created PDF under the name test.pdf and sends the document to the browser.

This is just an example to show how easy it is to create PDF files online. Before you start your own PDF scripts, check all the TCPDF examples to get an idea how-to use the different methods.

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Setup a quick Yahoo Search page within a few minutes!

A few days ago the “old” Google web search API has stopped working for the web public. Not a big surprise after the release of the AJAX web search API. A customer of mine is using search results in his mini sites to give them a little more body. This is why I needed to look for some alternative. During the Zend PHP conference earlier this year, I got in touch with the Zend framework and learned that there is already a class to obtain results from the Yahoo search engine. The class has features to search the Yahoo API for web sites, image, news and the local search results.

Installing the library

I decided some time before to use the classes from the Zend framework for future projects because the classes are well written in PHP5. If you like to do the same you should install the lib on a central place on your web server to get access to the framework from all your websites. After uploading the files I added this row to .htaccess file for the website I’m working on:

php_value include_path ".:/home/mylocation_for_zend_framework/"

This way you’re able to access the classes without to think about the class paths. Of course you are free to add this include path to the php.ini file or to your apache configuration.

Search Yahoo via the API

Before you can start you need to request a Yahoo developer key. Visit this page and get one for free.

The manual for the Zend framework has easy to use examples for all important methods. This way you’re able to have a result without to think about the code. Just create a file and add this code and add the Yahoo developer key:

require_once 'Zend/Service/Yahoo.php';
$yahoo = new Zend_Service_Yahoo("YAHOO_APPLICATION_ID");
$results = $yahoo->webSearch('PHP');
foreach ($results as $result) {
echo $result->Title;
}

Run this script and you get the titles for the top10 results for a Yahoo search on “PHP”. Just enter a different search keyword (or variable) to get different results. According the Yahoo web search documentation we have some important search features like:

• region (Yahoo has different local search engines for countries like UK, NL or DE)
• results (the number of results you get back for your query: default 10, max. 100)
• start (you need this one to get result pages like with a real search engine)
• language (if you need other results than in English language)

There are more options check their site for more further reference. In our example we want to have control about the options above. To use them we need to add the keys and values into an array:

$options = array('start' => 10, 'language' => 'nl', 'results' => 10, 'region' => 'nl');

This option array can be used in the “webSearch()” method this way:

$results = $yahoo->webSearch('PHP scripts', $options);

While executing this modified snippet we get some error because the option “region” is not included in the class. Not so bad, but it’s very important to have this option because the US version doesn’t have so much Dutch language results. After checking the class (file: Zend/Service/Yahoo.php) I found this code on row 529:

$validOptions = array('appid', 'query', 'results', 'start', 'language', 'type', 'format', 'adult_ok',
'similar_ok', 'country', 'site', 'subscription', 'license');

Just add the value “region” to this array and you’re fine (I will submit this change to Zend and I’m sure they will add this change to future releases).

If you combine this snipped with a form you have almost a full featured search box for your website. To create a complete result with summary and URL we need this code snippet (replace this code with the prev. “output” code):

echo '<p><a href="'.$result->Url.'">'.$result->Title.'</a><br />
'.$result->Summary.'</p>';

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