DaniWeb Forum Index > Web Development > PHP

Email form results as PDF

Please support our PHP advertiser: PostgreSQL or MySQL? Compare and contrast the two most popular open source databases

Thread Solved

•

Join Date: Nov 2007

Posts: 119

Reputation: Roebuc is an unknown quantity at this point

Solved Threads: 2

Roebuc

Offline

Junior Poster

Email form results as PDF

Jul 22nd, 2008

Can someone tell me how I can accomplish this. I want the results of a form to be placed in a pdf and then added as an attachment. I am not sure if this is possible, but if someone knows how, please let me know. Thanks.

•

Join Date: Aug 2007

Posts: 189

Reputation: martin5211 is an unknown quantity at this point

Solved Threads: 14

martin5211 martin5211 is offline

Offline

Junior Poster

Re: Email form results as PDF

Jul 23rd, 2008

To generate a PDF into PHP, there are two techniques: PDFLib or FPDF. PDFLib has some restrictions on licencing (commercial applications), I encourage to use FPDF because is free and Open Source, although PDFLib is rough and more complete (use your criterion). At http://fpdf.org there are a place to download the class and good tutorials. Use $_GET or $_POST variables to get the form data depending the form method.

To send the email, mail() function or PHPMailer are commons methods to perform these assignments. Please take care to encode the attachment and the headers, set multipart content type first, then the proper content type and encoding in each part, we could send plain or html text and multiple attachments too.

In this example I've used FPDF and mail() techniques. I don't know if it is better move this code to snippets section.

 Help with Code Tags 
 php Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
<?php
// download fpdf class (http://fpdf.org)
require("fpdf153/fpdf.php");
 
// fpdf object
$pdf=new FPDF();
 
// generate a simple PDF (for more info, see http://fpdf.org/en/tutorial/)
$pdf->AddPage();
$pdf->SetFont("Arial","B",14);
$pdf->Cell(40,10, "this is a pdf example");
 
// email stuff
$to = "target@domain.com"; 
$from = "me@domain.com"; 
$subject = "send email with pdf attachment"; 
$message = "Please see the attachment.";
 
// a random hash will be necessary to send mixed content
$separator = md5(time());
 
// carriage return type (we use PHP end of line constant)
$eol = PHP_EOL;
 
// attachment name
$filename = "example.pdf";
 
// encode data (put attachment in proper format)
$pdfdoc = $pdf->Output("", "S");
$attachment = chunk_split(base64_encode($pdfdoc));
 
 
// main header (multipart mandatory)
$headers  = "From: ".$from.$eol;
$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0".$eol; 
$headers .= "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"".$separator."\"".$eol.$eol; 
$headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit".$eol;
$headers .= "This is a MIME encoded message.".$eol.$eol;
 
// message
$headers .= "--".$separator.$eol;
$headers .= "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"".$eol;
$headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit".$eol.$eol;
$headers .= $message.$eol.$eol;
 
// attachment
$headers .= "--".$separator.$eol;
$headers .= "Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=\"".$filename."\"".$eol; 
$headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64".$eol;
$headers .= "Content-Disposition: attachment".$eol.$eol;
$headers .= $attachment.$eol.$eol;
$headers .= "--".$separator."--";
 
// send message
mail($to, $subject, "", $headers);
 
?>
<?php
// download fpdf class (http://fpdf.org)
require("fpdf153/fpdf.php");

// fpdf object
$pdf=new FPDF();

// generate a simple PDF (for more info, see http://fpdf.org/en/tutorial/)
$pdf->AddPage();
$pdf->SetFont("Arial","B",14);
$pdf->Cell(40,10, "this is a pdf example");

// email stuff
$to = "target@domain.com"; 
$from = "me@domain.com"; 
$subject = "send email with pdf attachment"; 
$message = "Please see the attachment.";

// a random hash will be necessary to send mixed content
$separator = md5(time());

// carriage return type (we use PHP end of line constant)
$eol = PHP_EOL;

// attachment name
$filename = "example.pdf";

// encode data (put attachment in proper format)
$pdfdoc = $pdf->Output("", "S");
$attachment = chunk_split(base64_encode($pdfdoc));


// main header (multipart mandatory)
$headers  = "From: ".$from.$eol;
$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0".$eol; 
$headers .= "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"".$separator."\"".$eol.$eol; 
$headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit".$eol;
$headers .= "This is a MIME encoded message.".$eol.$eol;

// message
$headers .= "--".$separator.$eol;
$headers .= "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"".$eol;
$headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit".$eol.$eol;
$headers .= $message.$eol.$eol;

// attachment
$headers .= "--".$separator.$eol;
$headers .= "Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=\"".$filename."\"".$eol; 
$headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64".$eol;
$headers .= "Content-Disposition: attachment".$eol.$eol;
$headers .= $attachment.$eol.$eol;
$headers .= "--".$separator."--";

// send message
mail($to, $subject, "", $headers);

?>