PDFs in Drupal
Making PDFs work well in Drupal 8
Presented by Dan Hansen - Sevaa Group, Inc.
@DanAtSevaa @Sevaa #DrupalConNA
Introduction - Who Am I?
Dan Hansen
Lead Developer at Sevaa Group, Inc.
Worked with Drupal for 7 years
Acquia Certified and generally pretty cool
You Came Here to Hear About
PDFs in Drupal
The Importance of PDFs in Drupal
PDFs are universal as a document format, but can feel left behind in support
Previously a closed format
Previously an expensive format
Move to make PDF handling as ubiquitous in web as image handling is.
PDFs in core!
Let’s talk about PDFs
Based on Postscript, a language used to format for printers.
Proprietary format from Adobe in 1993
ISO standardized in 2008 (ISO 32000-1)
Designed to bring together document layout with font embedding and data storage with available
compression.
What Makes PDFs
Special?
● Rich Media
● Security
● Standardization
PDF Rendering Libraries
Print-to-PDF
Important consideration: Do you actually need to generate PDFs in code?
Modern browsers offer effective Print-to-PDF built in, with easy control via print style sheets.
Generate PDFs if:
● You require precision layouts (forms are a good example)
● You need to implement a template
● You need to implement security features
Rendering Libraries: TCPDF
Server-side, 100% PHP based
New version being worked on, which means the current functional version is considered ‘obsolete’ and
will no longer get updates.
Old version does not work on PHP 7.2+ without patching
https://github.com/tecnickcom/tc-lib-pdf/issues/18
https://github.com/tecnickcom/tcpdf
Rendering Libraries: DOMPDF
Server-side; 100% PHP Based
Back to active development after a long, static stint in Google Code. Also now cooperates well with
package management solutions like Composer
Powerful and widely-used, but with known issues (Render loop on large tables, no float support)
Only officially supports CSS 2.1 and HTML 5
http://dompdf.github.io/
Rendering Libraries: Wkhtmltopdf
Server-side; Software Binary
Uses an interface like PHP Wkhtmltopdf to interface with Drupal and other PHP applications
Most predictable rendering--uses the WebKit engine
This is more than likely your best option--if you can get it work
Rendering Libraries: PDFtk
Server-side; Software Binary
More of a PDF manipulation tool:
● Add/remove pages
● Combine PDFs
● Fill PDF templates with data
Rendering Libraries: Lightning Round!
● html2ps/html2pdf
● AdobeFOB
● PDFLib
● Zend_Pdf
● XSL:FO
● And Many More!
Drupal PDF Modules
PDF Drupal Modules
Printer, email and PDF versions for Drupal 8 https://www.drupal.org/project/printable
● Stable as of the end of last year
● Relies on PDF API module, which is not stable
● PDF API does not install without older version of DOMPDF
Entity Print https://www.drupal.org/project/entity_print
● Flexible library selection
● No version issues; can use current branches
● Best replacement for old Print module.
Stupid PDF Tricks
Make a PDF from HTML
Use Entity Print with Wkhtmltopdf or DOMPDF
But what if you don’t want to build based off an entity?
DEMO TIME!
Combine Two PDFs
Use PDFtk and a wrapper like mikehaertl/php-pdftk
DEMO TIME!
Dump a Generated PDF into A File Field
Use Drupal 8’s awesome entity handling
DEMO TIME!
Fill in a PDF Template
Use FillPDF to do this!
Wanna do it programmatically? Use PDFtk and a wrapper like mikehaertl/php-pdftk
DEMO TIME!
Generate a PDF with a Password on It
Leverage FPDI and it’s extensions
DEMO TIME!
Questions?
Thank You!
@DanAtSevaa @Sevaa #DrupalConNA
