Right now I'm working on a Symfony web app, and it is using TCPDF to print receipts. I would like to know if there is a way/method to know how long is part of my content and compare it to the rest of the empty page. If the content is larger than the rest of the page, it would give a add another page and put the content there.
For example, I have 3 tables in my first page. If the first two tables occupy 80% of the page, and the third will ocupy 50%, compare those 50% to the 20% remaining of the first page, and since the content is bigger than the rest of the page, add another page and put table 3 there.
I don't have any code to show right now, but I am asking now since this is something I will have to do in the future (and I know there have been alot of problems with overlapping tables)
There's a function I use called public function checkHeights()
that, as the name suggests, checks the heights of an element in TCPDF.
public function checkHeights($pdf, $array, $checkHeight = 10){
$max_height = 0;
foreach($array AS $item){
$current_height = $pdf->getStringHeight($item["width"], $item["text"], false, true, '', 1);
if($current_height >= $max_height){
$max_height = $current_height;
}
}
$page_height = $pdf->getPageHeight();
$margins = $pdf->getMargins();
if($pdf->GetY() + $max_height >= ($page_height - $margins["bottom"] - $checkHeight)){
$size = $pdf->getFontSizePt();
$style = $pdf->getFontStyle();
$pdf->SetFont('helvetica', 'I', 6.5, '', true);
$pdf->SetColor("text", 155, 155, 155);
$pdf->Cell(0, 0, 'Continued...', 'T', 0, 'R', 0, '', 0, false, 'T', 'T');
$pdf->SetFont('helvetica', $style, $size, '', true);
$pdf->SetColor("text", 0, 0, 0);
$pdf->addPage();
$pdf->Cell(0, 0, '', 'B', 1, 'R', 0, '', 0, false, 'T', 'T');
}
return $max_height;
}
It accepts 3 variables: Your $pdf
object, an array of arrays containing cell information and the height (space from the bottom) to check against.
There are two ways to use this function. Firstly, checking to see if a single Cell
will take up the remaining space on a given page:
self::checkHeights($pdf, array(array("width" => 0, "text" => "")));
If there isn't enough space, it will save your font and style settings and add a small Continued...
to the right side of your page.
Secondly, passing in the contents of a row (or list of Multicell
items):
$height = Self::checkHeights($pdf, array(array("width" => 45, "text" => "Example"), array("width" => 54, "text" => "Example"), array("width" => 52, "text" => "Example"), array("width" => 26, "text" => "Example"), array("width" => 0, "text" => "Example")));
In this example, the current row item has 5 cells, with widths of 45, 54, 52, 26 and 0
(0 being the remaining horizontal space). It also takes into account cell wrapping (ie making the row grow in height to accommodate text overflow) and will add the Continued...
text if it's too long.
Once you have $height
defined and a new page added (if necessary), you would create your row of Multicells
:
$pdf->MultiCell(45, $height, "Example", 'L', 'L', 0, 0, '', '', true, 0, false, true, $height, 'M');
$pdf->MultiCell(54, $height, "Example", 0, 'R', 0, 0, '', '', true, 0, false, true, $height, 'M');
$pdf->MultiCell(52, $height, "Example", 0, 'R', 0, 0, '', '', true, 0, false, true, $height, 'M');
$pdf->MultiCell(26, $height, "Example", 0, 'C', 0, 0, '', '', true, 0, false, true, $height, 'M');
$pdf->MultiCell(0, $height, "Example", 'R', 'R', 0, 1, '', '', true, 0, false, true, $height, 'M');
Refer to the TCPDF documentation for using ->MultiCell()
function, but the important ones are the ones that use $height
and the last one, which is vertical alignment.
Essentially, checkHeights()
is a way to construct cells in a row that all have the same height, based on the content, but also a way to check if a cell will use up the remaining vertical space on the page, and add a page before outputting a new cell. If you need more clarification, let me know.