How to save Template as PDF

I've created an ivoice by using a Template.
How can I save this to PDF?
When using \PhpOffice\PhpWord\IOFactory::createWriter($doc, 'PDF');
It says $doc is not an instance of PHPWord. How do I get back the PHPWord object?

---

Want to back this issue? Post a bounty on it! We accept bounties via Bountysource.

[nicolasidweb]

Hi,

You need to define your PDF writer.

First, download TCPDF or a library as proposed in PhpWord (DomPDF, MPDF...).

Define the path of this library :

\PhpOffice\PhpWord\Settings::setPdfRendererPath('path/to/tcpdf');
\PhpOffice\PhpWord\Settings::setPdfRendererName('TCPDF');

You need to save your template as docx and then open it with IOFactory and finally save it.

$phpWord = new \PhpOffice\PhpWord\PhpWord();

//Open template and save it as docx
$document = $phpWord->loadTemplate('yourtemplate.docx');
$document->saveAs('temp.docx');

//Load temp file
$phpWord = \PhpOffice\PhpWord\IOFactory::load('temp.docx'); 

//Save it
$xmlWriter = \PhpOffice\PhpWord\IOFactory::createWriter($phpWord , 'PDF');
$xmlWriter->save('result.pdf');  

[franzholz]

I start the PHP example Sample_07_TemplateCloneRow.php. I have added the following lines at the end of the sample's PHP code.
PHP loads the 'Sample_07_TemplateCloneRow.docx' and stores it back in PDF format. I have tried all 3 PDF converters. MPDF, DOMPDF and TCPDF. The generated PDF files contain all the texts on the right positions. However all the table lines of the cell borders and frames are missing in the generated PDF files. Is this a bug anywhere or are does PHPWord only offer the conversion of the texts inside of the DOCX files without the lines?

...
$phpWord = \PhpOffice\PhpWord\IOFactory::load(PATH_site . $name);
$rendererName = \PhpOffice\PhpWord\Settings::PDF_RENDERER_MPDF; //PDF_RENDERER_DOMPDF   PDF_RENDERER_TCPDF
$rendererLibraryPath = PATH_site . $generationConf['handleLib.']['rendererLibrary.']['path'];
\PhpOffice\PhpWord\Settings::setPdfRenderer($rendererName, $rendererLibraryPath);
$objWriter = \PhpOffice\PhpWord\IOFactory::createWriter($phpWord, 'PDF');
$objWriter->save('Sample_07_TemplateCloneRow.pdf');

[superjj74]

i've problems with pdf writer.. the pdf generated do not contain any images or layout position of source document.
i try the 3 writes and the result is the same, maybe the reader do not load correctly the source doc?

Hi, cannot see any images either, or page breaks or table cell background colours.
Producing a docx followed by a pdf as follows:

$objWriter = \PhpOffice\PhpWord\IOFactory::createWriter($PHPWord, 'Word2007');
$objWriter->save($finalnamedocx);

\PhpOffice\PhpWord\Settings::setPdfRendererPath('tcpdf_min');
\PhpOffice\PhpWord\Settings::setPdfRendererName('TCPDF');
$xmlWriter = \PhpOffice\PhpWord\IOFactory::createWriter($PHPWord , 'PDF');
$xmlWriter->save($finalname.'.pdf');

Can anyone advise?

[gplaza]

same problem here : cannot see any images either, or page breaks or table cell background colours.

[adailtonjunior]

Me too! Has anybody a solution for this problem? Up

The answer is no. I've asked half a dozen colleagues and gurus to look into it with me and it just won't work. Ended up producing the whole file again with tcpdf, which sucks cause it cannot look exactly the same.

[janssenMA]

Really out of the box thinking is just to let MS Word open the file and save it as a PDF.
You'll need to install MS Word on your server, enable the COM extension in your php.ini (extension=php_com_dotnet.dll), and make sure the user that runs the Apache server has permissions to read / write in the folder.

Hope this helps someone:

$word = new COM("word.application") or die("Unable to instantiate Word");
$word->Visible = FALSE;

// Open file
$readOnly = true;
$wdOpenFormatAuto = 0;
$msoEncodingAutoDetect=50001;
$word->Documents->Open( $sourcePath, false, $readOnly, false, "", "", true,"", "", $wdOpenFormatAuto, $msoEncodingAutoDetect);

// Save as PDF
$XlFixedFormatTypePDF = 17;
$word->ActiveDocument->ExportAsFixedFormat($destinationPath, $XlFixedFormatTypePDF, false, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7, true, true, 2, true, true, true);

[donquick]

Right - well that's several hours of my life I'm not going to get back then. Can anybody help me understand this, please? Can i assume that if you are going to go to the trouble of making a word file programatically (and learning to use phpWord in the process) then you are going to want to do something with the word doc you have created. Can i also assume that that is going to be something other than download it and open it in word and say horray i have a word file - otherwise you would have just done it locally in the first place, or written some vba or somehting, right? I am guessing that nearly everybody using phpWord wants to make a pdf from the resulting doc programatically and send it to customers or colleagues or whatever. So what is going on with tcphp. It is just the exact right tool if you want to take the doc that you have made (hours of work) and create a pdf that exactly resembles one that you would have made on the first word processor you bought back in 1988, but otherwise it is not waht you need at all unless you want to program it from scratch. Am i right in believing that you have to tell it how to interpret everything on the page, every font, every color, every image, etc. by setting properties.

Phpword is a good piece of work and has clearly been a project requiring many many hours of thought and work, but it has been a waste of time unless there is a simple add on that will create a simple, but loyal pdf. In my case it is a single page invoice, not complicated just a logo some text and a simple link.

Has anybody found a solution to this please. In the instructions for phpWord, it says somehting about the html-to-pdf method is used for generating pdfs which is why there is no resident save for that format. Has anybody tried that solution or found a pdfwriter that in any way does a half reasonable job of converting the .docx without too much difficulty. Thanks.

[@janssenMA I'm sure you are right about the COM, but i only have a shared server web host at my ISP and i don't think that i can start installing things as i please. I think i just have to use what is there.]

Understand your frustration. Mind you some people do want to generate a word document by itself without an intention to generate a pdf version of it (it's the case for some of my clients, they want to be able to keep editing the document once generated).

2 solutions (which are both very disappointing compared to 2 lines of code which could have made our lives much, much easier):

• I found a guy that developed a word to pdf converter but with Python.
• The one I would have gone with if I hadn't decided to recode all of it in tcpdf, an API called convertAPI: http://www.convertapi.com/word-pdf-api

[donquick]

Hi Underfrog, It sounds as if we have been down the same rocky road. Thank you for the answer, I will look at the link you provided. As i am personally not that bothered about the intermediate step (namely the doc) itself, I am now looking at this. http://html2pdf.fr/en/example which might give me a quick route to a pdf that I can attach to an email which is all i really want. I will post again if it works so that others can reduce the pain of learning phpword only to hit a big wall. cheers, Don

[str]

+1 for the images problem. I tried both the PDF and HTML writers.