Copyright © 2007, Zend Technologies Inc.

Generating Dynamic PDFs Using Zend Framework and Zend Java BridgeBy Eric Ritchie

• Senior Technical Consultant and Trainerat Zend Technologies

• Zend Framework and PHP 5 ZCE

• Fifteen years of system administration experience

• Ten years of PHP (3,4 & 5) and four years Zend Framework development experience

• Hobbies: Sampling good wines/whiskies (gifts welcome)

Eric Ritchie bids you welcome!

What do we want to achieve?

• Template based PDF generation

• Assumption: You know a little about Zend Framework. If this is a bad assumption raise your hand

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Other (historic?) methods of PDF generation

• Many options… PDFlib (PECL component) Zend_Pdf (Zend Framework component) HTML2PDF Others…

• … but somehow not quite right Either complex to use Or not flexible enough

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A better way: Apache FOP

• Many advantages FO: Printing industry standard HTML like syntax Very powerful Details of PDF generation are hidden from the user.

• The catch? FO format is a bit touchy: The price of power The J word: Java Work in progress: Not feature complete (yet)

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A better way: Apache FOP

• What catch? There is no catch! Use a template engine Use Zend Java Bridge

• How do we put this together…?

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Zend Server

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• Complete, well-tested PHP stack – PHP, Zend Framework, debugging extension, Java Bridge and more

• A free community edition and a commercial edition – both are production-ready

• Application monitoring and diagnostics (integrated with Zend Studio)

• Multi-level performance enhancement capabilities

• Software updates and security hot fixes

• Easy and quick installation

Why Java Bridge?

• Easy to use

• Transparently integrates Java objects into PHP projects

• High performance

• Free!

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Why Zend Framework?

• Popular implementation of MVC

• Lightweight templating engine

• Easily extendable

• Free!

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Zend_View: The V in MVC

• Zend_View is a component class of Zend Framework for working with the “View” portion of the MVC design pattern

• It provides a system of helpers, output filters, and variable escaping

• Zend_View is not tied to one template system - it can utilize PHP templates or other systems, manipulated through the view script

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Zend_View: The V in MVC

• But Zend_View works with HTML, right? Yes, by default, but we can bend it to our will! Time to create a class:

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Zend_View_FO2PDF: Continued

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Zend_View_FO2PDF: Continued

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Zend_View_FO2PDF: Java Bridge call

• Could not be easier… Create an instance of our Java class in PHP Then use it by calling class methods Only two lines of code!

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The dark side: Our Java code

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Defining our class path

• Who said “hack”? Need to edit /usr/local/zend/etc/watchdog.jb

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Feed the view class: Write a template

• We need to write some FO (nothing offensive)• All features of ZF available to us• …but we must omit something!• The XML header

<?xml causes a conflict! So we add it in the view class (did you notice?)

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Putting it together

• We need a controller…

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…and done!

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What next?

• The sky’s the limit Add tables Add images Add vector graphics (SVG)

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What next?

• But I don’t like PDFs what about me? You can render Excel/Word documents too …or anything text based really Use your imagination!

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Questions?

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• Thanks for listening!