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roricka

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PDF FILE: What server tools can deliver a dynamic web page as a .PDF file for downloading to the browser? (Can you use a .PDF printer driver?)

Apparently Adobe sells a suite of server tools that can convert a dynamic (e.g., .NET) web page to a .PDFfile and deliver it to the browser. They start at around $60,000! Is there a cheaper way to do this? For example, would it be possible to install a .PDF printer on the server, and under user control print a page to a file using the .PDF printer driver, then allow the user to download that file to their client machine (and then be viewed using Adobe Reader)? We don't want our web users to have to install any software other than Reader.

Bottom line: how can we provide the visitors to our web site a .PDFfile representing the content of dynamic web pages (e.g., pages with filtered data in the form of graphs and tables) ?

(NOTE: if this question is not in the right zone, please suggest a correction. Thanks)
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tetrasodium

You can make php generate PDF's fairly easily if your server supports it, if not it's free (http://www.fpdf.org/)  complete with some nice examples and tutorials on that same site.  The comments at the bottom of http://php.net/manual/en/book.pdf.php also mention a handful of other options for generating a pdf using php.
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Hi tetrasodium,

Thank you for your suggestion. I'm afraid we're in a .NET environment and php is not a possible option. What do you think about my idea of using a PDF printer driver on the server?
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tetrasodium

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