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Commercial HTML to PDF conversion needed

Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 1:32 pm
by alex.barylski
I have tried every PHP PDF solution I can find and none work 100% on the data I need them to.

I need something commercial, so I can report bugs and get answers fast if nessecary. Preferably Linux based, but Windows might work, as I can install the software on a Windows box and wrap the software with a Windows based web service which my Linux software can then call.

I have googled for HTML to PDF(very important not just a PDF API - as I need to easily transform some complex tables into PDF) converter but everything seems to be Windows components or applications which do not support CLI, which a web service would probably need.

Just incase I've missed something, does anyone know of anything?

Cheers,
Alex

Re: Commercial HTML to PDF conversion needed

Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 1:50 pm
by Jonah Bron
I might be being really stupid right now, but Adobe Acrobat can convert HTML to PDF...

Re: Commercial HTML to PDF conversion needed

Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 2:04 pm
by alex.barylski
So does OpenOffice and a plethora of other applications.

I need to be able to use this program/library programmatically, to build a PDF from HTML document an archive it in a database; again programmatically.

I'm hoping to find a little PDFConverter tool (Windows with a CLI or Linux variety) which I can invoke, request to generate a PDFfile from a web page, then have the PDF contents returned to me for archiving.

Cheers,
Alex

Re: Commercial HTML to PDF conversion needed

Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 2:29 pm
by Jonah Bron
I knew it! :D

Knowing you already searched Google, I looked it up on Sourceforge.net. Ironically, the second one is written in PHP.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfizer/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/html2fpdf/

Re: Commercial HTML to PDF conversion needed

Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 10:08 am
by alex.barylski
I was really hoping for a paid for, commercial solution. The second you linked to is almost always first when googling, which is what I am using now and it fails to generate proper PDF on occassion so I need something a little more professional.

Cheers,
Alex

Re: Commercial HTML to PDF conversion needed

Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 11:46 am
by Weirdan
PCSpectra wrote: I have googled for HTML to PDF(very important not just a PDF API - as I need to easily transform some complex tables into PDF) converter but everything seems to be Windows components or applications which do not support CLI, which a web service would probably need.
Why wouldn't you just invoke firefox programmatically and ask it to print to PDF (using something like this: http://sites.google.com/site/torisugari ... lineprint2)?

Re: Commercial HTML to PDF conversion needed

Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 11:03 pm
by alex.barylski
While that is an interesting solution, unfortunately I need it done in PHP as I need to save the PDF to database everytime a change of the master document(s) are changed.

Re: Commercial HTML to PDF conversion needed

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 1:02 am
by Weirdan
So you were ok with running some binary (even wrapping it into webservice) but once the binary is firefox you suddenly don't want to run it? How come?

Re: Commercial HTML to PDF conversion needed

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 7:10 pm
by alex.barylski
i'm running debian and firefox would probaly be complicated to install plus it's heavier than other CLI converters I've played with

Re: Commercial HTML to PDF conversion needed

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 8:01 pm
by Jonah Bron
(Pardon me if I'm being presumptuous)

Complicated? Don't you just extract the tar.bz?

Re: Commercial HTML to PDF conversion needed

Posted: Sun May 02, 2010 3:15 pm
by alex.barylski
I don't know to be honest I have very little experience in linux outside of setting up simple daemons, like AMP, Postfix, SSH, etc.

Firefox is a Windows application and might require installing things like X, Gnome, etc. Using Ubuntu is out of the question, it's a web server and I would hate the idea of running all that extra software just to use firefox when there are CLI utilities that convert HTML to PDF.

Plus, ideally, a CLI tool would give me more option in building a PDF, such as encryption, headers, etc.

Re: Commercial HTML to PDF conversion needed

Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 9:53 am
by Jonah Bron

Re: Commercial HTML to PDF conversion needed

Posted: Tue May 04, 2010 12:35 pm
by alex.barylski
Doesn't hurt but I found a linux/windows binary that does an excellent job: HTMLDoc.org