mpdf ignoring javascript

Question

I have a question here..

I have used buffering to get the pdf files using mpdf..

but I got a little confused here..

I have some javascript on the page that I was buffering.. but the generated content from javascript is not getting converted into pdf..

let me get this straight..

lets say I have this element

<div id='text'></div>

and on my page i have a javascript code to add text to that div.. and the results is...

[open page via browser]

<div id='text'>TEXT I ADDED USING JAVASCRIPT</div>

but when i convert it to pdf...

<div id='text'></div> (I DIDNT GET THAT TEXT)

This is the script that is used.. template.php

ob_start();

// content of page (included inline javascript code)

$yourfile = ob_get_content();
$_SESSION[forms] = $yourfile;
echo $yourfile;

convert.php

session_start();
include("MPDF54/mpdf.php");

$mpdf=new mPDF('c','A4','','' , 0 , 0 , 0 , 0 , 0 , 0); 

$mpdf->SetDisplayMode('fullpage');

$mpdf->list_indent_first_level = 0; // 1 or 0 - whether to indent the first level of a list

$mpdf->WriteHTML($_SESSION[forms]);

$mpdf->Output();

Anybody can help me with this???

Answer 1

mpdf supports basic javascript.

PDF readers understands basic javascript functions.

like print(); you can add it using SetJS() function of mpdf library.

include("MPDF54/mpdf.php");

$mpdf=new mPDF('c','A4','','' , 0 , 0 , 0 , 0 , 0 , 0); 

$mpdf->SetDisplayMode('fullpage');

$mpdf->list_indent_first_level = 0; // 1 or 0 - whether to indent the first level of a list

$mpdf->WriteHTML($_SESSION[forms]);

$mpdf->SetJS('print();')  //JS code with <script></script> tags.

$mpdf->Output();

Answer 2

PHP *PDF libraries (tcpdf, fpdf, mpdf etc...) cannot run javascript code, because that would require javascript interpreter and browser rendering capabilities, or if it supports javascript it will not run it the way you are used to using it in client side programming. Along with that, css and markup interpretation is also very poor.

However, if you are looking for alternatives that are capable of rendering javascript and css like a normal browser would, i suggest wkhtmltopdf.

wkhtmltopdf is shell utility to convert html to pdf using the webkit rendering engine, and qt. It is run as a console program with parameters specifying what to render and has tons of options. Basically you can tell it to load a page wait 5 seconds for javascript to complete then create pdf. There are linux and windows versions available, though for linux it requires X11 library to be installed.

I'm sure there are some other options out there, but I am using wkhtmltopdf for years and it produces PDF file looking exactly as the webpage would look in Chrome or Safari browsers, and also javascript execution works perfectly.