PDF View for the CakePHP Framework

This plugin for the CakePHP Framework allows you to use the dompdf HTML to PDF converter to easily create PDF documents. It's tightly integrated with the CakePHP view renderer.

Requirements

• PHP 5+
• CakePHP 2+
• dompdf 0.6+

Installation

Download the repository and extract the archive to a folder called Dompdf in your Plugin folder.

Vendor Files

Download dompdf 0.6 and move the content of the archive to Plugin/Dompdf/Vendor/dompdf.

Cache Permissions

Please create a cache folder for dompdf called dompdf in APP/tmp/cache and change the permissions to 777.

Usage

Because of the tight integration between this plugin and CakePHP, there's only a few things you have to do to get started.

1. Load the plugin by adding CakePlugin::load('Dompdf', array('bootstrap' => true)); to APP/Config/bootstrap.php.
2. Instruct CakePHP to look for the PDF extension by adding Router::parseExtensions('pdf'); to APP/Config/routes.php. If you already use Router::parseExtensions in your project, simply add 'pdf' to the list.
3. Finally, make sure that the RequestHandlerComponent is loaded for all controllers by adding public $components = array('RequestHandler'); to APP/Controller/AppController.php.

Configuration Options

Copy the APP/Plugin/Dompdf/Config/dompdf.php to APP/Config if you want to change any of the default configuration.

Layout

You'll need to create the default layout for your PDF documents by creating a file named default.ctp in APP/View/Layouts/pdf.

Views

For each action that should return a PDF, simply create a pdf folder in the folder where the views for the controller reside and create a file with the name of the action inside the pdf folder.

For example, if your controller is named DocumentsController and the action is named view, you need to create the view.ctp file in APP/View/Documents/pdf.

View Variables

There are a few view variables that you can use to change the behaviour of the view.

• download Set to true to set a Content-Disposition header. This is ideal for file downloads.
• name The filename that will be sent to the user, specified with the extension.
• paperOrientation The paper orientation. Must be either 'landscape' or 'portrait'.
• paperSize The paper size. Acceptable values include 'letter', 'legal', 'a4', etc. See CPDF_Adapter::$PAPER_SIZES.

Example:

public function view($id)
{
    // ...
    
    $params = array(
        'download' => false,
        'name' => 'example.pdf',
        'paperOrientation' => 'portrait',
        'paperSize' => 'legal'
    );
    $this->set($params);
}

URL

To access any action as a PDF, all you have to do is point your browser to the URL associated with the action in question and add '.pdf' at the end just like you would do for JSON or XML.

For example:

http://example.com/documents/view/100.pdf