Need coder with help on printing requirements

The recommended method of customizing your AppGini-generated application is through hooks. But sometimes you might need to add functionality not accessible through hooks. You can discuss this here.
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nycwebmaster
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Need coder with help on printing requirements

Post by nycwebmaster » 2016-06-13 15:13

Hi,

I have an application made in appgini that I'm having problems with the print out since I need some modification on the way that it prints. I need to be able to print out a few pages of different report to be customized. I need this job to be performed as soon as possible. I need a coder that is available on the phone and a person that is responsible and I will get him/her with other gigs. We are US based company so we need someone that is around the same timezone that we are in order to communicate about this project and future others.

Please let me know if you are interested in making some extra cash! You have to be proficient in PHP and MYSQL.

jmacdougall
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Joined: 2015-11-02 01:22

Re: Need coder with help on printing requirements

Post by jmacdougall » 2020-11-20 19:58

It is 2020 and I do not see much support in the forums for this. I am on the fence about moving forward in AG if I cannot find an inutitive way to format printouts to PDF (Work Orders, Invoices, PO, etc...). I want my printouts to look like forms from Quickbooks or any other application out there.
Jeff MacDougall

pbottcher
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Re: Need coder with help on printing requirements

Post by pbottcher » 2020-11-20 20:43

Per default there is no support for PDF creation in AppGini. If you want such a feature you need to implement it on your own by using an addition library. e.g. fpdf or tcpdf or....
Any help offered comes with the best of intentions. Use it at your own risk. In any case, please make a backup of your existing environment before applying any changes.

jmacdougall
Posts: 26
Joined: 2015-11-02 01:22

Re: Need coder with help on printing requirements

Post by jmacdougall » 2020-11-21 04:10

Wow, tcpdf looks nice. I wonder if anyone on here has used either of these in their applications.
Jeff MacDougall

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jsetzer
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Re: Need coder with help on printing requirements

Post by jsetzer » 2020-11-21 07:34

Personal (!) experience:
Yes, I did. Integrating into my appgini web application was a bit tricky but got it running.

But after hours of research and prototyping I decided against it because it is much work if you have to program a complex DIN A4 page perfectly matching the detailed specification or a given form paper where data has to be placed very precisely at some x/y coordinates of a given form. It takes hours to reproduce a given form 100% identically by php code. So in that customer project I decided against it.

For easier PDF s those libs can be fine. It always depends on the requirements and specs. But i can say that it takes time and you cannot expect wonders. Pressing a flexible amount of data into a fixed paper format is always tricky from my experience.

We are using phpdocx advanced version now (which is commercial). I can take a Microsoft office word (which is commercial) document, insert placeholders and save it to the server. In php I can use that lib for merging the docx template with data and save it as docx, then convert it to pdf. The required libs are commercial and quite expensive (599$) but handy. In this case the estimated cost for hours of programming a DIN A4 page according to the specs would have been much higher than purchasing those commercial libs and just integrating them into my code. It is a make-or-buy decision as so often.

There is a trial version which produces watermarks in the output.

* Microsoft office and phpdocx are commercial software.
** I am not related to any of these vendors
Kind regards,
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