how would one go about using this on a shared hosting environment with the need to compile it before running and the needed modification to the php.ini file ..

I guess it would be possible to provide a binary distribution for common platforms and, depending on the version of PHP you're running (ie < 5.3) you could use the dl() function to dynamically introduce the extension. The shared hosting environment might have disabled that too, though.

This is extremely cool. I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops, but I can already think of a thousand uses for it. Well done!

Awesome, wish this had been around sooner. How about incorporating this with docvert? http://holloway.co.nz/docvert/

Nice! I'm working on building a web application that services small and medium sized manufacturing businesses. We've recently had feature requests for displaying certain web pages as PDFs instead of HTML (for email or whatever). I'll look into making use of this! Thanks!

really helpfull ..

This looks fantastic! I'm getting an error when trying to configure it though, it's probably something with my system. I'm on Cent OS 5, I've got libwkhtmltox.so (version 10.0) in /usr/local/lib and that path is in $LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and i've got the folder wkhtmltox and its contents in /usr/local/include, which is in my $PATH. I've also got wkhtmltox in /usr/local/bin, which means I can run it through the command line no problems. when I run ./configure, it finds the library, and then on the next line looks for “wkhtmltopdf_init in -lwkhtmltox… no”, then tells me I need libwkhtmltox version 0.10 or later. Any ideas?

James, have you run ldconfig?

Just tried it, but it's made no difference I'm afraid :(

`ldconfig -v | grep 'wkhtml'` gives this output: “libwkhtmltox.so.0 -> libwkhtmltox.so“, so I presume it is doing something with the library

Sure you have the libs for the right architecture you're trying to build the extension for?

Yeah, I'm running libwkhtmltox-0.10.0_beta5-i386, which is definitely the right one. I've also checked that all the dependencies are installed and up to date for wkhtmltox, and everything seems fine, but still won't configure I'm afraid

Hey James I've updated the config.m4 file that phpize uses to generate the configure script. Can you:

$ git pull origin master
$ phpize –clean
$ phpize
$ ./configure

And if it isn't working paste the entire output of the configure script?

The best convert html to pdf in PHP: mPDF: http://mpdf.bpm1.com/

Hey, thanks for that – afraid it's still not configuring though :( The output is:

checking for egrep… grep -E
checking for a sed that does not truncate output… /bin/sed
checking for cc… cc
checking for C compiler default output file name… a.out
checking whether the C compiler works… yes
checking whether we are cross compiling… no
checking for suffix of executables…
checking for suffix of object files… o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler… yes
checking whether cc accepts -g… yes
checking for cc option to accept ANSI C… none needed
checking how to run the C preprocessor… cc -E
checking for icc… no
checking for suncc… no
checking whether cc understands -c and -o together… yes
checking for system library directory… lib
checking if compiler supports -R… no
checking if compiler supports -Wl,-rpath,… yes
checking build system type… i686-redhat-linux-gnu
checking host system type… i686-redhat-linux-gnu
checking target system type… i686-redhat-linux-gnu
checking for PHP prefix… /usr
checking for PHP includes… -I/usr/include/php -I/usr/include/php/main -I/usr/include/php/TSRM -I/usr/include/php/Zend -I/usr/include/php/ext -I/usr/include/php/ext/date/lib
checking for PHP extension directory… /usr/lib/php/modules
checking for PHP installed headers prefix… /usr/include/php
checking if debug is enabled… no
checking if zts is enabled… no
checking for re2c… no
checking for gawk… gawk
checking for libwkhtmltox support… yes, shared
found in /usr/local
checking for wkhtmltopdf_init in -lwkhtmltox… no

and how about the full output of:

$ ldconfig -v

What is the difference of this library compared to, for example, DomPdf? That is an OOP php implementation to convert html scripts with css into a pdf document.

This uses the webkit rendering engine to produce output that is nearly identical to what you'd see in a browser (including JavaScript execution)

FWIW, I'm getting the *exact* same error as James with the exact same environment. Did either of you ever find the solution?

Matt,

What architecture? (32 or 64)?

32 bit. CentOS 5.5. One difference – I couldn't figure out how to set LD_CONFIG_PATH, so I symlinked libwkhtmltox.so to /usr/lib instead of /usr/local/lib.

try symlinking /usr/lib/libwkhtmltox.so.0 to /usr/local/lib/libwkhtmltox.so

Great idea! I was already using whtmltox through a exec(), but I can imagine the extension is quicker.

Great work!
Is there a windows/apache installation?

I haven't tested on windows but don't see any reason why it couldn't work…

I'm getting the same error as the other two users above using CentOS and a 64 bit system “version .1 or later required”. What was the resolution on these?

im opening a new issue on github for this – better place for discussion.

http://github.com/mreiferson/php-wkhtmltox/issues#issue/5

Hi could you post a step by step tutorial on how to install this on ubuntu. I am a real n00b on this.

thanks!
Debonair

Anyone tried building this for Windows? Would be perfect but don't know where to start myself.

I make this simbolic links in /usr/local/lib and also in /usr/lib
then works! (Ubuntu 10.04)

Sorry for my english :(

Does it work with session-protected urls? I mean if i have an active firefox session with the site that runs this, will the php code use the active session or i have to do something to make it use the active session (so i don’t end up printing a login screen instead)?

It really depends on what you’re trying to do. I’ve used one-time-use keys to allow access to a page I’d like to convert.

[...] даже появилось php расширение для этой библиотеки – php-wkhtmltox – “да это просто праздник какой то!” подумал я, [...]

I would like to know this as well

I’ve made an alternative to the extension in case you can’t install it.
It works only on Unix like systems.
It use the “static” version of wkhtmltopdf in order to use footers.
It don’t use authentification or session etc… it fit my need as is.
Usage :
$pdf = new toPdf(“put_url_you_want_renderred_in_pdf_here”);
$result = $pdf->generate();
//if $result["ret_value"] == 0, generation was ok
//in that case you got pdf content in $result["stdout"]

_wkhtmltopdf_path = dirname(__FILE__) . “/../../../bin/wkhtmltopdf-i386″; //adjust to your needs
$this->_main_page_path = $main_page_path;
}

public function execWkHtmlToPdf() {
$descriptorspec = array(
0 => array(“pipe”, “r”), // stdin is a pipe that the child will read from
1 => array(“pipe”, “w”), // stdout is a pipe that the child will write to
2 => array(“pipe”, “w”), // stderr is a file to write to
);
$cmd = $this->_wkhtmltopdf_path.” -q -B “.$this->_footer_margin.” –footer-html “.$this->_footer_path.” “.$this->_main_page_path.” /dev/stdout”;
$process = proc_open($cmd, $descriptorspec, $pipes, NULL, NULL);
if (!is_resource($process)) {
return FALSE;
}
fclose($pipes[0]);
$ret = array();
$ret["stdout"] = stream_get_contents($pipes[1]);
$ret["stderr"] = stream_get_contents($pipes[2]);
fclose($pipes[1]);
fclose($pipes[2]);
$ret["ret_value"] = proc_close($process);
return $ret;
}

public function generate() {
$ret = $this->execWkHtmlToPdf();
return $ret;
}

}

?>

@matticakes Yeah that is possible, but it is a hack.

There has to be a way to build a php extension that is session aware.

Take care,

Justin

How can I set pageSize in global settings?

ok nvm. Its size.pageSize .. should have looked before asking

 I’ve got one if you want it. I wrote a session/cookie aware HTTP class that you can use with wkhtmltopdf also supports https and proxies.