There are some expensive libraries that you can use to generate PDF files...but why bother with them, when there are good free alternatives like Zend_Pdf? [...] Since this is a quite repetitive task, let's also create a PDF generator class to help us. In case you don't have Zend_Pdf, just download Zend Framework to get it.

He shows how to set it up to work with basic PHP arrays to pull the content from as well as an XML structure with the same sort of information. You can download his class here.

PHP is the world's most popular server-side Web scripting language. This reference card was created to help you quickly navigate some of PHP's most commonplace features, including objectoriented programming, array and string manipulation, regular expressions, and MySQL integration.

The card (created by Jason Gilmore) is available for free download (PDF) from the DZone website.

Q: Tell me some about the update/restructuring (like what prompted the change)

A: As of December 2008, php|architect will enter its sixth year of publication. Much has changed within the PHP community - and in our company'"since we launched our magazine, and we felt that it was time to ensure that our brand and our flagship product were up-to-date with the market they serve.

The process of change actually started earlier this summer, when we launched our new line of training courses - the first truly comprehensive training program designed specifically for PHP developers. Our brand identity and the magazine were the next logical targets - particularly when you consider how long they have been around and how many people they reach every month.

In addition, one problem that we have always had with the magazine has been its publication schedule - we initially created php|architect as a PDF-only publication, and since we've switched to the print format we've been struggling with the management of our publication timelines. The unfortunate reality is that postal services throughout the world sometimes take a *really* long time to deliver third-class mail and, historically. we have never done as good a job of taking that into account as we could'"something that we intend to fix with this relaunch.

Finally, our aim with php|architect has always been to create a resource capable of providing the PHP community with the educational tools and knowledge needed by professionals who work and operate in world-class, enterprise-level environments. We felt that our current price point and distribution strategy had moved away from this core goal, and that a major adjustment was needed to bring us back on track.

Q: What does this mean for current readers/subscribers?

A: A lot of good things! First of all, the cost of a subscription goes down to as low as $29.99 for twelve issues - and that includes both the print *and* the PDF versions of the magazine. Naturally, we're going to make good on all our current subscribers and extend their subscriptions based on the cost of the magazine when they signed up for it - thus, most people should see their remaining issue counts go up considerably at no extra cost, and new subscribers will be able to finally get access to the magazine at a very reasonable price.

In addition, our current subscribers (as well as the new ones!) will enjoy better delivery times, and all the advantages that come with the new format.

Q: What all is involved in the change? Are there any changes to the magazine(s)?

A: Much of the work that is involved in the relaunch of our activities will go on behind the scenes, but visitors to our websites will note lots of changes over the coming months'"starting with a minor redesign of our site to accommodate the new logo and brand identity, as well as the new pricing and subscription strategy for the magazine.

Starting with the January issue, we are targeting a 45-day window for shipment of the magazine'"meaning that the print copies of the January issue, for example, will be mailed out to subscribers around the beginning of December - thus ensuring more prompt delivery in everybody's mailboxes. In addition, the entire magazine will switch to full-colour printing throughout - thus providing a richer experience for our users and a more challenging and fun environment for us to develop our work in. We will continue to support the PDF version using our popular DRM-free distribution and personalization system, and try to synchronize the arrival of the print issue with the release of the PDF file as closely as possible.

Also for the first time, we are publishing our editorial calendar for all of 2009. This will help readers know what's coming, advertisers better plan their campaigns and authors draw inspiration for their writing activities.

Q: Will there be new things available immediately after the change?

Once the initial brand relaunch is complete, we are planning to re-engineer our site to provide a smoother shopping experience and better account management facilities. Since we relaunched our website almost a year ago, our web-based sales have more than doubled, and our back-end infrastructure has handled the growth without any problems. On the front-end side, however, we have done a considerable amount of research on the habits and needs of our customers and have discovered areas ripe for improvements that we couldn't even imagine before, and we will be redesigning some areas of our website to reflect the lessons we have learned.

In addition, we have some great promotions planned between here and New Year's - including a comeback for our greatly popular "Seven Days of Christmas" series of offers over the holidays. We skipped 7DOX last year, and our users gave us an earful for it, so we'll make sure to keep our priorities straight this time!

The new php|architect website has already been launched along with new training courses for the Zend Framework Certified Exam.

To subscribe to the new and improved php|architect magazine, visit their subscription page and signup. Find out more in this post on their site.

If you're a PHP programmer who has tried to generate PDF documents on the Windows platform, you may have run into some very irritating issues. This article will discuss those issues, show you how to generate PDF documents that can be viewed on a desktop and through a browser, and help you troubleshoot if you run into problems.

They show how to set up the PDF libraries, create a simple PDF document ("hello world" of course) including the use of true type fonts and the best ways to output it to the browser for public consumption.

That right, fire up those down-loaders and grab your headlamp and pick-axe. There's fresh code to be had for the taking! You can download Zend Framework 1.6 here Zend Framework Download Page.

Lots of changes made their way into this new release including the Zend_Tool component, built-in pagination, a new CAPTCHA form element, the Zend_File_Transfer component and much more as they also closed over 280 tickets with bugs for this release.

There's also a note about the Zend Framework documentation and how it can now be downloaded from zend.com (free registration required) in a much more portable PDF format.

When generating reports in PDF format you suddenly have a lot more control over layout and design than you do with plain old HTML and CSS (although much progress is being made with print style sheets). You can create some really nice reports on the fly that your users can view, save for later or e-mail to their co-workers for review. In this post I will show you how I generate PDF reports using CodeIgniter.

You'll need this external library to get the PDF building to work, but integrating it with CodeIgniter is simple. It comes with its own interface you can use after making a cezpdf object. He shows you how to work with normal text, tabular data and inserting headers and footers for each page.

Leveraging the power of PHP and a PDF generation library called dompdf, you can create a simple, seamless user experience in Adobe Flex. Flex enables you to create an outstanding presentation to the end-user, with instant validation of user-supplied data and the full power of ActionScript 3. Through AMFPHP, you'll gain access to PHP's full toolset, enabling virtually limitless applications.

They show how to install the needed packages - AMFPHP and the dompdf PHP package to make the PDF generation easy ("one of the best PDF tools for PHP you can get"). The rest is the creation of the Flex part of the application - generating the form and using PHP to push out a PDF file at the other end, complete with their data.

Here was the hardest GSoC week ! I wrote a big part of the PDF output and both the themes "phppdf" (each PHP manual part in a file) and "phpbigpdf" (a big PDF file with all the sections).

Rudy's project for the GSoC is to create a Docbook renderer that can take in a standard Docbook file and output it into multiple formats. This past week saw the development of the PDF output method but he's also created methods for making a CHM (Windows help file) and a manpage output format. You can keep up with his latest progress on his blog.

• Scott MacVicar and Mike Sullivan - Lessons learned from the front line. They provide useful checkpoints across a wide range of topics to help keep projects in check.
• Marcus Bointon - Mail() and Life after Mail(); (Marcus has recorded an additional segment to cover the slides he was unable to cover at the conference. This is well worth a listen for the tips he passes on in handling bounces and getting emails through to the intended recipient).
• Frameworks debate (Zend Framework, CodeIgniter and Symfony) plus an extended audience debate and an interesting and humourous last thought from a member of the audience.
• Derick Rethans (closing keynote) - Personal homepage tools have grown up. Derick looks back over the development of php and offers some tips and insights into using php to it's fullest potential.

Each of the above talks also has audio (mp3) you can download and listen to to follow along with the slides. Check out the main conference site for more great PDF and audio of the presentations from this year's event.

After my playtime with Docbook and PDF generation, I decided to make a sample PDF of the current Part 9 of the tutorial series. Your comments as to layout, style, portability and other facets that make a PDF worth downloading are very welcome. Eventually the whole series will be available in this format as well as HTML.

He's using Docbook 5, Docbook XSL and Apache FOP to generate the files. Syntax highlighting is done through Phing.