Joomla 3.8 PDF view using DomPDF

Question

I was searching a way to save a layout of my custom component as PDF.

I tried various libraries JS / PHP. What I wanted was utf-8 support, tables, images to be properly saved in the pdf file.

I spent the last day trying to integrate the DomPDF library to my component. I read numerous guides and howtos with no luck.

The major problem was that Joomla changed the Document Renderer library after version 3.8 (I am not 100% percent about the version) and the latest version of DomPDF which no longer requires the config file [config.inc.php].

In previous Joomla versions the following guide should work fine : Creating PDF views

So using the DomPDF in the default view, was a problem for me, because I wanted the option to have a link to download as PDF from my List view and from my Item view.

Finally I did it using a raw view and a new layout file for clean output.

I am open to any corrections, suggestions or any other improvement.

Thank you

Answer 1

1. Download the latest release of the DomPdf

2. Inside Libraries folder place the a copy of dompdf folder from the release.

3. Create a copy of the view file /components/mycom/views/item/view.html.php to /components/mycom/views/item/view.raw.php

Remove any scripts scripts and everything else that is useless in the the raw view. This view will be only a save as dialog to download the pdf file.

4. Create a new layout in the /components/mycom/views/item/tmpl folder named pdf.php with the following code :

The file will not have nothing to display so we will save all the output to a php variable.

defined('_JEXEC') or die('Restricted access');
require_once JPATH_LIBRARIES  . '/dompdf/autoload.inc.php';
use Dompdf\Dompdf;


$html ='<style type="text/css">';
$html .='/*place your css if any here*/';
$html .='</style>';

$html .='<h1>' . $this->item->title . '</h1>';
$html .='<div>';
$html .= $this->item->content; //or any other field you like
$html .='</div>';

$dompdf = new Dompdf();
$dompdf->set_option('isHtml5ParserEnabled', true);
$dompdf->setPaper('A4', 'portrait');
$dompdf->setBasePath(JPATH_LIBRARIES . '/dompdf');
$dompdf->loadHtml($html);
$dompdf->render();
$dompdf->output();

$filename = $this->item->alias . '.pdf';

$dompdf->stream($filename);

Then just place a link anywhere in your /components/mycom/views/item/tmpl/default.php layout file using raw type pointing to the new layout pdf.php

<a href="index.php?option=com_mycom&view=myview&type=raw&layout=pdf&id=<?php echo $this->item->id?>" target="_blank">Download PDF</a>