Hello, I need to create a pdf file using a txt file as the data source, coding some program/script that runs on Windows Os. What kind of skills should I look to post this job on sites like Odesk or Elance: some general programming like php or C or some specific pdf scripting skills ? Any help is much appreciated.
IF you want the program to run on windows and want something done at a reasoable price you will most likely want someone who knows C#
Hi Markus, thank you for your answer. In reality, the program can even run on linux or a webhosting under linux with php or perl: the final choice will be based on pricing. The action to be performed are very simple and there will be only one option when running the script: txt file contains 10 fields of data on each line that should be copied on the pdf file.
Basic php skills are all that's needed. I use a thirdparty site called phptopdf.com - I gather they'll start charging soon so check that out
Hm. Anyone know of any other toPDF-libraries available? The PHPtoPDF-thingy seems a bit... limited, and the code they provide in the examples are a bit abysmal, hence I'm not too keen. They also use an eval() in the API-PHP-file, which is turned off on my server, so it might not actually work (although it seems to be in a deprecated / legacy function). Meh, not a fan. Also, no built-in "to database" functionality (not too hard to code in yourself, but a bit of an oversight). Any others?
I have used http://www.tcpdf.org with great results in the past. Now as I have graphs and things which I need to export to a PDF I prefer using wkhtmltopdf.org which is basically like taking screenshot of your page via the server. What I do is that I generate specific pages that only the server has access to which will be exported to the pdf file for the user.
The latter one seems good, but it's a bit of a hassle to have to create a separate on-server batch-file (or similar) - especially (I haven't really looked into using it yet, I might be mistaken) if server-setup might play into getting it to work properly. I'll have a look at it, though, it might do what I need Thanks for the suggestions!
tcpdf looks good and I like that the code is on the server and that you aren't relying on a third party. wkhtmltopdf is for personal use only and not something you can offer on your website for generating reports etc.
Not really problematic to run wkhtmltopdf as a user-service, but that would mean you'd have to call some sort of background task running on the server (for instance, create a PDF-file on any update to a given folder (by means of people generating reports or updating information etc)).
Exactly, I used this to talk to wkhtmltopdf https://github.com/mikehaertl/phpwkhtmltopdf If a user wants a report I will call wkhtmltopdf via my php script which will generate the pdf file in a folder which I specify. I can then present a link to that pdf file so that the user may download it.
You know if its a one time thing for yourself there are firefox add-ons that will do it like Web2pdf and many others. Just view the text in the bowser then click a button to save as pdf no programming required.
www.fpdf.org is really simple to use and will do the job...used it a lot for various projects. You can also find a few sample codes on their site, for example generating pdf invoices, tables and stuff like that.