Hello all Zend_Pdf is a great component to generate PDF files with ZF. If you want to populate PDF templates with text, however, it can be very time consuming to get the positioning of the text fields just right. I wrote about this issue here:
http://tinyurl.com/bym43f After having developed several ZF applications in which text had to be inserted into PDF templates, I knew there must be a better way and went about developing one. The result is a project called phpLiveDocx, which is an unofficial component for ZF. (If it were to become official component some day, I would be thrilled.) The idea is really simple: 1. You design a template in a word processing package (such as Open Office or Word). In the template, you define any number of text fields, into which data will be later inserted (same idea as mail-merge). 2. Using phpLiveDocx, you assign data to the template. 3. You generate and save the populated document as a PDF, DOCX, DOC or RTF file. The great advantage of this approach is that you uncouple the formatting of the template and the position of the text fields. In other words, should a designer change the layout of a template, there is no need for a developer to update the positioning of the text fields. Of course, the other great advantage is that you can save the resulting document as DOCX, DOC or RTF, in addition to PDF. Here is a really basic example, which illustrates how phpLiveDocx works: http://tinyurl.com/ao9c2v (The template and resulting document can be download from the bottom of the post.) Here is a very short getting started guide and download links: http://tinyurl.com/db23fc If you need any help or want to talk about phpLiveDocx, just follow up here or post me a message: http://tinyurl.com/culdpj Thank you Jonathan Maron http://www.phpLiveDocx.org
