http://www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2009/07/29/installing-pdftk-php/

[andrewheiss]

Installing pdftk-php | Andrew Heiss.com
http://www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2009/07/29/installing-pdftk-php/

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Skeeter101 on 2009-08-10 12:41:40

Andrew,

\

Thank you for the detailed tutorial. Very nice. But I have a question
for you. This is the issue that I have been confronted with: 1 pdf
document, broke into 2 pages, need to submit data relevant to page 1 to
one table, and submit data for page 2 to another table, and then
'merge' the 2 seperate pdf documents into one.

\

Is this possible?

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Andrew on 2009-08-14 15:13:27

So you have a two page PDF with a different form on each page? You can
either have separate submit buttons that will send all the form data to
two different scripts, or you can write a PHP script to handle the data
differently, for example:

\

// information from page 1 - name, phone, email
// information from page 2 - option1, option2
// Clean up the variables first to prevent SQL injection

$sql1 = "INSERT INTO table1 (name, phone, email) VALUES $POST['name'], $_POST['phone'], $_POST['email']";
$insert1 = mysql_query($sql1);

$sql2 = "INSERT INTO table2 (option1, option2) VALUES $POST['option1'], $_POST['option2']";
$insert2 = mysql_query($sql2);

\

To "merge" the two forms, just extract the relevant information from
the database, probably with SQL join statements, assign the data to
variables that are connected with the empty PDF form fields, and inject
the data.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Scott M on 2009-08-24 20:20:23

Andrew,

\

I have a Linux box with root access and would be willing to pay you for
your time. Alternatively, I would be happy to make a donation to any
cause or charity in exchange.

\

Any chance you would be willing to access one of my servers and bring
your example to life for me? I've come pretty close, but I'm still
having issues between folder permissions and the FDF creation. The
example is writing to the database just fine and I'm pretty sure it
wouldn't take you very much time.

\

Safe travels and thank you for your time!

\

Scott

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Andrew on 2009-08-24 20:57:36

Sure. Send me an e-mail to andrew (at) this domain . com with details.
I'll be out of Egypt for the next 10 days, but after September 3 I
should be able to get it set up for you.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by kimani on 2009-08-28 12:22:47

Has worked thanks alot

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Neha Khetan on 2009-10-01 10:14:13

Hi Andrew,
i have a problem to generate a pdf in arabic using php. can you help me?
i will be thankful to you

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Andrew on 2009-10-05 13:26:13

I sadly have never used mPDF. I know it is possible (according to this
page -
http://mpdf.bpm1.com/examples
), so I'm guessing you're having issues with UTF8 encoding. PHP and
MySQL often have problems with Unicode. Make sure you're doing
everything listed in the first answer to this question:
[http://stackoverflow.com/qu...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/279170/utf-8-all-the-way-through "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/279170/utf-8-all-the-way-through")

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Neha Khetan on 2009-10-02 04:34:15

I am just using mPDF

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Tony on 2009-10-20 13:39:53

Andrew,

\

Forgive me as I am having a bit of a brain freeze. I can follow 90% of
both of your guides, they are great and exactly what I need. I can use
pdftk under Windows with no problems (from command prompt), my problem
is putting it on my Web Server. I have full access to all the
directories on my Server, i will paste my server specs at the bottom of
this message, I am just failing to grasp what exactly i need to do, do i
just upload the pdftk.exe to my public_html folder on my site? My
apologies for coming across a bit dozy on this one, but any help would
be great.

\

Tony

\

Server Specs.
Operating system
RedHat linux 7.3
Web server
Apache 1.3.27
Scripting language
PHP 4.3.10
Scripting language
SunONE ASP 3.6.2
CGI Scripting language
Perl 5.6.1
Database server
MySQL 3.23.56
Mail server
Exim 3.36

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Andrew on 2009-10-20 13:57:34

Everything works in Windows because you're using pdftk.exe, which is
compiled for Windows only. You can upload it to your Linux server but it
won't do anything.

\

You'll need to install pdftk on the server itself as a compiled package
for Red Hat, and if you're on a shared host, you'll probably have to
contact tech support directly to have them do it.

\

Once it's installed, you'll need to type in the path to the executable
directly into the script in PHP (/usr/local/bin/pdftk, for example)

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Tony on 2009-10-22 12:14:02

Andrew,

\

Thanks for the quick response. I am on a shared host and they are
unfortunately not going to install pdftk for me, so I am stuck unless I
move to a dedicated server.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Tony on 2009-10-30 14:10:59

Andrew,

\

I just wanted to say I managed to sort this out, we had a desktop lying
around which I have turned into a webserver to run this procedure. Many
thanks again for a great guide and your help.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Barry on 2009-11-30 18:11:33

Andrew, is there a way on the view page, to have a button to download
all records, possibly in a zip archive, so you would end up with a
number of individual PDFs? I have tried a few variations but cant seem
to get it right, i have very limited experience in PHP. Thanks.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Andrew on 2009-11-30 18:34:37

Yes, it is possible, but you'd have to modify the code a little. Right
now, the download.php file queries the database and retrieves one
entry. You'd need to create a query for multiple entries, loop through
the results and create PDF files in a temporary folder, zip them up,
serve them to the browser, and delete the temporary files. It's doable,
it'll just take some PHP chops.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Randall on 2009-12-15 23:35:03

Hello. Thank you for the article. I am having a problem. I get this
prompt from acrobat when attmpting to open the pdf in the browser...

\

Acrobat could not open (filename) because it is either not a supported
file type or because the file has been damaged (for example, it was sent
as an email attachment and wasn't correctly decoded).

\

How can I fix this?

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Dan on 2012-03-26 17:04:32

You most likely do not actually have pdftk installed (it's a
totally separate process from the above steps for pdftk-php).

[https://github.com/andrewhe...](https://github.com/andrewheiss/pdftk-php/wiki/troubleshooting "https://github.com/andrewheiss/pdftk-php/wiki/troubleshooting") 

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Matthew on 2010-01-15 05:44:24

Hi Andrew,

\

I've been looking for a script like this for ages. Could you please
tell me if its possible to populate an invoice template with multiple
lines of items ?

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by JC on 2011-02-18 20:44:32

To fill forms with multiple lines items, you must create the 'text
field' with 'Allow multiple lines' enabled. When populating teh form,
you just need to add \r to specify a line break.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Sam Kelly on 2010-02-02 19:42:46

Hi Andrew,

\

The PDF's the make_pdf function are producing do not contain any user
entered data. I tried opening one of the fdf temp files in notepad, and
the data was there. When I tried manually importing the fdf in adobe
reader, the same thing happened -- it said the data was imported
successfully, but none of the fields were filled in / nothing changed.

\

I suspect the problem has something to do with the part where you
mention that "If you are using LiveCycle, you'll need to save the final
PDF as a static form compatible with Acrobat 7. pdftk doesn't work with
dynamic forms or PDFs from later versions of Acrobat.". In the
screenshot you provided of your save-as drop down menu, Acrobat 7 static
is a selectable choice, but in my LiveCycle, the only save/export
options in the drop-down are Adobe Static PDF-Form, Adobe Dynamic XML
Form, Adobe XML Form, Adobe LiveCycle Designer Template. So I am unable
to select any option that forces Acrobat 7 compatibility. Likewise, I
was unable to find similar export options when I tried save-as'ing in
Acrobat 8.

\

I have LiveCycle Designer ES... should I try to get an older version?

\

Please advise :)

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Sam Kelly on 2010-02-03 14:52:58

I actually was able to figure it out... missed the comment about the
complex naming scheme... was trying to do
$data['variablename']='value'; when it should have been
$data['form1[0].#subform[0].variablename[0]']='value';

\

make sure you remember to do the dump thing to see what the structure of
your pdf actually is before trying to have pdftk process it... would
have saved me a lot of time

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Candy on 2010-02-24 08:20:59

Hi Andrew, This appears to be exactly what I need for a project, but
I'm having the same problem as Randall. I get an error that Acrobat
cannot open the file because it is either not a supported file type or
because the file has been damaged.

System: Vista Ultimate 32bit, Acrobat Pro 9, FireFox

I previously had PDFXChange Viewer. Uninstalled that. Then, I tried on
both FF and IE, same results. Even saved the downloaded file and got the
same results opening from my desktop. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted on 2010-03-28 20:25:01

As it turns out, the pdf in the GitHub repository somehow got tainted by
Mac-encoded fonts, so it failed for me too. I just remade it and can
guarantee that it's working again at
[http://pdftk-php.andrewheis...](http://pdftk-php.andrewheiss.com/ "http://pdftk-php.andrewheiss.com/").
Try with the new pdf and see if that fixes it.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Adam De Fouw on 2010-05-10 19:24:23

[http://pdftk-php.andrewheis...](http://pdftk-php.andrewheiss.com/example/example.pdf "http://pdftk-php.andrewheiss.com/example/example.pdf")

Use this example.pdf on Andrew's site instead of the version on GitHub.
I was pulling my hair out for the past 2 hours trying to figure out why
it wasn't working. Turned out that embedded Mac fonts were my nemesis,
as Andrew alluded to.

Use that PDF, and it should work for you.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted on 2010-05-10 20:10:17

@adam - the GitHub pdf still has Mac embedded font issues? That
should have been fixed in [commit
e6fa74f5936b7e200549](http://github.com/andrewheiss/pdftk-php/commit/e6fa74f5936b7e2005493b5e6017a3164df75d3c "http://github.com/andrewheiss/pdftk-php/commit/e6fa74f5936b7e2005493b5e6017a3164df75d3c").
Hmm... Maybe GitHub is really running on an OS X server that converts
the PDF when it gets committed?

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Adam De Fouw on 2010-05-10 20:18:14

@ Andrew - maybe I downloaded the wrong one. Not sure.

All I know is that when I downloaded this one -
[http://pdftk-php.andrewheis...](http://pdftk-php.andrewheiss.com/example/example.pdf "http://pdftk-php.andrewheiss.com/example/example.pdf") -
it worked.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Dan on 2012-03-26 17:06:03

[https://github.com/andrewhe...](https://github.com/andrewheiss/pdftk-php/wiki/troubleshooting "https://github.com/andrewheiss/pdftk-php/wiki/troubleshooting")

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by adrienne on 2010-03-05 05:47:08

I've got the pdftk uploaded and installed on my server. It runs fine.
The web-based form writes to the database. The view form brings up a pdf
form with data from the database. However, the submittable form comes up
but when submitted does not write to the database. I have the address in
the submit button set correctly, I don't get any errors it just
doesn't write. I changed the url of the submit button using Adobe
Livecycle. I even used the "hairy" arrays for the form fields and the
pdf still did not write to the database so I changed them back. I'm
using Linux ubuntu 9.10 server.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted on 2010-03-16 20:14:06

You said you uploaded pdftk to your Ubuntu server. Did you upload the
pdftk.exe file or did you install the package on the server? You should
be able to easily install pdftk on your Ubuntu server by typing `sudo
apt-get install pdftk` in the terminal.

Does pdftk run correctly on the server? Try typing `pdftk --help`
from a server terminal to make sure it works.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Nicolas on 2010-03-23 18:30:32

Hi Andrew,

First of all thanks for a great article like this.
I just want to tell the other fellows how to install this on a redhat
server (linux).

First we downloaded the build from
[http://www.pdfhacks.com/pdf...](http://www.pdfhacks.com/pdftk/pdftk-1.41.tar.gz "http://www.pdfhacks.com/pdftk/pdftk-1.41.tar.gz")\
Second, unpack the file, and upload it to your server.
Third, connect via SSH (using Putty) to your server.
Fourth, go to the pdftk directory. Once there, run make -f
Makefile.redhat
Fifth, after that, in the pdftk folder should be a new file called pdftk
of 4.2 Mb.
Finally, go to the pdftk-php.php file, and in the passthru() change the
file location to the 4.2 Mb one.

Done!
The unpack info was taken from the
[accesspdf.com/pdftk](http://accesspdf.com/pdftk "accesspdf.com/pdftk").
I'm not an expert on this so hope it helps somebody.

Cya.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted on 2010-03-23 21:45:57

Excellent - thanks for the tips! I'm working on making a more static
instruction page on how to get pdftk working on different servers. This
will help a ton.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by David Parent on 2011-02-28 00:39:31

Your instructions say "Modify the information in example/_dbConfig.php
so that the application can connect to your database."

But the example dbConfig has code for SQLite, not MySQL. I am a newb, as
you can probably see. Can you post the proper connect code for Mysql?

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by David Parent on 2011-02-28 18:47:43

Is it possible to hire you to help set this up for me? I have it
installed on my server, but need a bit of help to make it all work with
my PDF.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Quinnsbrother on 2011-03-02 20:03:06

David Parent,
I also found that the new version of _dbConfig.php is lacking support
for mysql. This is what I've figured out. Delete the line that reads
$conn = new
PDO('sqlite:'.$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/../protected/pdftkphp.db');
and replace with the code below. Make sure to change the variables to
match your database.

$hostname = 'localhost';
$username = 'user';
$password = 'password';
$db_name = 'pdftk-php';

$conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$hostname;dbname=$db_name", $username,
$password);

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Dave Parent on 2011-03-02 21:33:55

Hey! Thanks so much! I will try this out tonight!

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Quinnsbrother on 2011-03-07 19:33:59

Here are a couple of things to help get this example working.
Need to un-comment this line in you php.ini file,
"extension=php_pdo_mysql.dll". Usually this is at the bottom of the
php.ini file.

I'm using a windows box for both of my development and production
servers. On my local machine I'm running EasyPHP 5.3.2i, which is
Apache and IIS on my production. I was having a difficult time
formatting the passthru() string that is sent to pdftk and the location
of pdftk.

I've used pdftk for a number of years to combine hundreds of pdf's
into one. I was doing this with windows batch files that are created in
excel. One major thing to remember is that if your file names and
locations have spaces in them, you need to put double quotes around the
file location. You don't have to put double quotes around the beginning
of pdftk, if you put pdftk.exe in your system32 folder. The system32
location worked on my EasyPHP installation but didn't work in IIS. I
think IIS blocks the use of the system path but I'm not sure. To get
pdftk working on IIS I had to locate pdftk.exe in the same folder as the
php files. I actually relocated the pdftk-php.php file in the same
folder as the other files, for simplicity. I'm relatively new to php so
I was having a hard time getting the passthru() string formatted
properly. I used the code below to save a text file with the passthru()
variable so I could see if it was creating the string correctly. I
changed the pdftk string into a variable then passed the variable to the
passthru() command

$passthu_command = "pdftk \"C:\Program
Files\EasyPHP-5.3.2i\www\pdftk-php_W-4\example\\$pdf_original\"
fill_form \"$fdf_fn\" output - flatten";
passthru($passthu_command);

//write variable to file this is for testing. Comment out for
production.
$myFile = "testFile.txt";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die("can't open file");
fwrite($fh, $passthu_command);
fclose($fh);

I found that pdf's were being created with 0mb and giving an error when
the pdftk string wasn't formatted correctly. The final string that is
sent to pdftk should be formatted something like below or your pdf
won't be created correctly.

pdftk "C:\Program
Files\EasyPHP-5.3.2i\www\pdftk-php_W-4\example\example.pdf"
fill_form "C:\Program
Files\EasyPHP-5.3.2i\www\pdftk-php_W-4\example\fdf208.tmp" -
flatten

The - (dash) before "flatten" should be used for the php script
because this is what dynamically creates the pdf for download. To test
locally you could substitute the - (dash) with a file name for the newly
created pdf, make sure you enclose in double quotes.

So, for EasyPHP with pdftk.exe located in the system32 folder the code
below worked. The hardest thing was trying to figure out how to format
the string with quotes around the file locations. Notice the slashes
before the double quotes in the file locations. I believe the double
slash before the $pdf_original is for windows environments. It makes
the $pdf_original variable populate properly.

$passthu_command = "pdftk \"C:\Program
Files\EasyPHP-5.3.2i\www\pdftk-php_W-4\example\\$pdf_original\"
fill_form \"$fdf_fn\" output - flatten";

passthru($passthu_command);

For IIS I had to copy pdftk.exe to the example folder, I also relocated
the pdftk-php.php file to the example folder and changed the
require('../pdftk-php.php'); line to require('pdftk-php.php');

$passthu_command = "pdftk
\"C:\inetpub\wwwroot\hr\w4\\$pdf_original\" fill_form
\"$fdf_fn\" output - flatten";

passthru($passthu_command);

You will note that the file paths are full paths on the windows hard
drive. This is because I couldn't figure out how to use relative paths
on a windows box.

In my final download.php file, I changed the $pdf_original variable to
include the path to the original pdf.
$pdf_original = "\"C:\inetpub\wwwroot\hr\w4\\w4.pdf\"";

In my final pdftk-php.php file I changed the passthru string like this:
$passthu_command = "pdftk $pdf_original fill_form \"$fdf_fn\"
output - flatten";
passthru($passthu_command);

This will allow me to create many different pdf forms with their own
individual download.php file, which contains all of the variables for
the different pdf's. For each pdf you also need a specific index.php
file to capture the variables from the POST string. I haven't figured
out how to create a single index.php file to collect all variables from
the different pdf's, as of yet.

For all non-required fields in the pdf, make sure the column in the
table is set to be NULL. If you don't mark the table columns as NULL
then any field not filled out will cause an error. For required fields
un-check the NULL box for the column in the table.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by stockball on 2011-06-01 15:13:48

THANKS Quinnsbrother!!! that really helped me to get this pdftk to
work...after i realized the original code was intended for linux i was
able to understand my problem and the code you provided was awesome!!!!
thanks, i have been working on this for a few weeks.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by JZ on 2014-01-21 08:48:27

Hope this helps someone. I used this for the pdftk-php.php file for IIS:

$passthu_command = "c:\\temp\\pdftk.exe $pdf_original fill_form
\"$fdf_fn\" output - flatten";
passthru($passthu_command);

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by David Parent on 2011-03-16 06:02:13

I'd like it to add a datetime timestamp into the DB. I have added a
datetime field to the users table. Can someone help?

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Scrobert on 2011-08-08 14:58:29

pdftk data_dump_fields is returning field names with what appear to be
unicode decimal representations such as 保. any suggestions to fix this?

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Evan Jones on 2011-10-27 19:57:37

Great tutorial!

However I am having some trouble with interactive PDF forms. I can
successfully create a PDF file that is downloaded to the browser with
generated FDF data if I use :

passthru("c:\windows\system32\pdftk $pdf_original fill_form
$fdf_fn output - flatten");

However this flattens the PDF and I want the PDF form to remain
interactive. I.e if there is a firstname form field, I want to put in
data, but have the data still editable by the user in the PDF.

If I use the following command: (which should produce the desired
outcome)

passthru("c:\windows\system32\pdftk $pdf_original fill_form
$fdf_fn output - ");
 
I get the PDF with interactive form elements, however it does not load
the FDF data into the fields. All of the form fields end up blank.

Help?\

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Adamorgill on 2012-04-27 15:49:27

 I have been using the pdftk.exe and pdftk-php.php for over a year now,
today i try to download a form i had submitted and i get an error
saying:

"Adobe Reader cannot open "xxxxxx" because it is either not supported
file type or the file has been damaged.

anybody know any fixes?

I have made sure 755 file security is  on the tmp folder, i check the
passthru to pdftk.exe, and scanned the pdftk-php.php file for any
errors..i cannot get it to work

will it not work with newer versions of Reader?

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Bgold0 on 2012-09-12 00:30:12

It successfully creates my pdf but everything comes up as little square
blocks like so - do you know the reason for this?\

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by mhu on 2012-11-09 01:19:12

Hi Andrew,

Is there a way to make it check for a duplicate entry into the
database?
ie; Print an error message back 'sorry this user has already been
entered'

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Tamalijs on 2012-12-26 23:18:39

STUCK - PDF is generated but size is 0K and error messge stating Adobe
could not open (file name) because its either not support file type or
has been damaged.  I followed about and saw other wih the issue but
nothing has fixed my issue. I am on a hosted server- PDFTK is installed
and through the browser I can check version of PDFTK and the FDF file is
generated ...

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Robert Paul Gass on 2014-04-30 00:51:58

Thanks for making this class available. When I was using the pdftk.exe
on the C drive it was producing a corrupted pdf, but putting pdftk.exe
into the folder with pdftk-php.php got it to produce the form. I still
got an undefined index error on line 47 of index.php after submitting
the first and last name. Would this work the same way when it's
uploaded to a server on the internet or would I need to do special
things with pdftk Server to get it to work correctly?

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted on 2014-04-30 01:04:13

The undefixed index error is unrelated to pdftk-php. It's probably
because PHP has improved and changed a lot in the past 4 years and that
the $_POST variable no longer works the same way. Something like that.

the If you're using a Windows server, you can just place pdftk.exe in
the same folder like you're doing with your local installation. If
you're using a Linux server, you'll have to install pdftk systemwide
and change the path in the script for it to work.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by Bob on 2014-08-03 22:16:51

I want to be able to save the pdf on the server after it outputs it to
the browser. Any help?

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by riky sunandi on 2015-01-13 04:52:51

great libraries Andrew

I have tried and succeeded, but the problem now is how we are to create
a dynamic table in pdf, dynamic number of rows. Can you help me?

Thank you.

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted on 2015-01-13 04:55:11

You can't do that with pdftk, since it assumes you have a static PDF
with predefined form fields. You'll need to find another library, such
as
FPDF

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted on 2015-01-13 04:55:54

See some examples here:
[http://stackoverflow.com/qu...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2132015/best-way-to-create-a-pdf-with-php "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2132015/best-way-to-create-a-pdf-with-php")

[andrewheiss]

Originally posted by riky sunandi on 2015-01-14 10:12:25

Okay, thanks for your useful answer..