History: mPDF
Preview of version: 66
mPDF
Overview
All Free / Libre / Open Source PDF generation solutions were analyzed and mPDF was selected as the overall best solution for deep integration in Tiki. The main reasons are:
- Vast feature set: The mpdfmanual.pdf (8 megs download) is over 600 pages!
- It's written in PHP (like Tiki) so it eases deployment, facilitates integration and makes it easier for the Tiki community to contribute.
- The approach is to convert HTML to PDF (other approaches would have been more complex / less suitable for the Tiki context)
- Strong multilingual support: Some of the other good solutions didn't support all languages. And thus, it would have forced us to have a second solution for these languages, which would have fragmented the efforts.
Since the GNU GPL v2 licence is not compatible with Tiki's LGPL licence, we cannot ship mPDF with the source code as part of Tiki. Thus, we have prepared the mPDF integration from Tiki16 in the code to an extent, that users can simply install mPDF in three simple steps and activate the feature with a prepared dropdown in the admin panel. mPDF is offered via Packages in Tiki18.
See also:
Table of contents
Installation
Please mind, that mPDF does not work in/behind an http-password protected directory; at least not with a simple standart installation without extra configuration.
This is the Steps 1 and 2 by hand
Download the mPDF library to your server, extract (unzip) to an appropriate place in or outside the Tikiroot (Tiki installation directory).
References:
| Download | http://www.mpdf1.com/mpdf/index.php get the newest stable version or https://github.com/mpdf/mpdf/archive/development.zip try the newest developer version |
| Github | https://github.com/mpdf/mpdf |
| Documentation | https://mpdf.github.io/ 'mpdf Manual' |
| Manual as PDF | http://www.mpdfonline.com/repos/mpdfmanual.pdf |
Recommended places to install mPDF:
either here inside the Tikiroot:
A :files/mpdf
or here inside the Tikiroot:
vendor_custom/mpdf
or outside the Tikiroot (recommended for security reason):
in a structure like this (recommended example): a "container" for the project: /myproject a directory for the filegallery (do not use the database for file upload!): /myproject/files/* the Tikiroot (main installation): /myproject/tiki16 and here the extracted mpdf directory: /myproject/mpdf
Make the following directories inside mPDF writable (in worst case "#: chmod -R 777 path/to/directory"):
this:
graph_cache
and this:
tmp
and this one aswell:
ttfontdata
sudo apt-get install composer
Since mPDF is on https://composer.tiki.org/ , you can run this command from the tikiroot folder
composer require mpdf/mpdf --update-no-dev
This will install mPDF in vendor/mpdf/mpdf (which you need to set in the admin panel). It is vendor/mpdf/mpdf and not just vendor/mpdf/
Alternatively, you could use this longer instruction if you need for some reason (which would get the data as per specifications at https://packagist.org/packages/mpdf/mpdf ):
php temp/composer.phar require mpdf/mpdf "6.1.3" --update-no-dev
This will install mPDF in vendor/mpdf/mpdf (which you need to set in the admin panel). It is vendor/mpdf/mpdf and not just vendor/mpdf/
You still need to set permissions as described above. This is supposed to be handled by Composer but somehow is not as of writing this.
This will modify your composer.json file. If you are running from SVN, this modification will be maintained as you do "svn updated". But if you install via FTP (The zip archive of Tiki), you will need to run this command at each upgrade.
Enable mPDF in Tiki:
Up to Tiki 15.x (and up to 16.1):
- Go to Control Panel > General > General settings (tab) > PRINT > mPDF
( example.com/tiki-admin.php?page=general#contentadmin_general-2 )
and select the path where you did install mPDF to.
Since Tiki 16.2:
- Go to Control Panel > Print Settings > PDF > PDF from URL > mPDF
( example.com/tiki-admin.php?page=print )
and select the path where you did install mPDF to.
Path to be set in the input field (opens when PDF and mPDF is chosen):
Steps 1 and 2 by hand:
- A : Copy to clipboardfiles/mpdf
- B : Copy to clipboardvendor_custom/mpdf
- C : Copy to clipboard../mpdf
Steps 1 and 2 by command line (composer)
- Copy to clipboardvendor/mpdf/mpdf
Tiki 18
From Tiki18 you can install mPDF via the Composer Web Installer
Then login to your Tiki and got to example.org/tiki-admin.php?page=print and set the following two preferences:
- PDF from URL: mPDF
See also: PluginPDF
Configuration
Although mPDF should work with Tiki out of the box even on average shared hosting, when you followed the above steps, you will have "only a basic configuration" at this point. There are tons of options that allow you to play with additional Fonts, creating paginated PDF documents, hiding the source URL etc., which you will find in the manual (see above references).
Main configuration of mPDF is located in */mpdf/config.php plus a number of more specific config files in the same directory.
Collection of References on doc.tiki.org
PDF general overview about PDF creation in Tiki
mPDF create PDFs from Tiki content (advanced library that works even on shared hosting)
PluginPDF alter default settings of mPDF per wiki page
PluginPDFPageBreak add a page break for PDFs created with mPDF
wkhtmltopdf create PDFs from Tiki content (needs root installation)
dompdf used for pdf print of slideshows
PluginMediaPlayer display PDF file from file gallery
PluginArchiveBuilder
Print