Html To PDF in CakePhp Using html2pdf Hangs - cakephp

I use html2pdf, which is based on TCPDF, in CakePhp to render Views in PDF.
However, sometimes the generation hangs, I mean the browser freezes and never receives data.
There is a way to debug such a behavior? In apache logs I do not see any kind of error...
$this->set(compact('quotation','company','user'));
$view = new View(null, false);
$view->set(compact('quotation','company','user'));
$view->viewPath = 'Quotations';
$view->layout = 'preventivo';
if ($quotation['Quotation']['quotation_type'] == SERVICE)
{
$content = $view->render('print_s_template');
$this->set(compact('content'));
$this->response->type('pdf');
$this->render('print');
the print.ctp has
App::import('Vendor', 'HTML2PDF', array('file' => 'html2pdf'.DS.'html2pdf.class.php'));
$html2pdf = new HTML2PDF('P','A4','it');
$html2pdf->WriteHTML($content);
$html2pdf->Output('exemple.pdf');
and the html is in print_s_template.ctp.

I found a solution myself. The problem is that I forgot to pass some variables to the View $view. And I suppose cake throw an error which, next, html2pdf cannot "render".
So: double check that all the variables in the view do exist!

Related

Kohana 3.3 request and response

One tutorial thought me, that I can fill my template with content, by putting:
$this->template->body = $this->response->body();
But, I cant see where the response is being populated. Even dumping the request and response, its just empty.
And secondly, how can I make advantage of the already built in Request class, to get some output from a function, without actually redirecting to that method ? Lets say:
$content = Request::factory('news/latest')->execute();
kind regards.
Using $this->template->body assumes that you are using Controller_Template controller. $this->template is a variable within Controller_Template representing View file application/views/template.php.
Setting something to $this->template->body passes $body variable to template view file. You can than use it (like echo $body;) within template view.
To get output from $content = Request::factory('news/latest')->execute(); your controller which handles news/latest Route must produce some output.
Than you can get this output like:
$response = Request::factory('news/latest')->execute();
$content = $response->body();

Restrict External Access to Controller, but enable access from Model (CakePHP 2.X)

In our application we are using the Controller and View to generate a PDF file which can be emailed to a user, the Controller renders a view file and passes it back to the model.
It has been setup like this because in another part of the application we use the same view file to display the PDF on-page (which requires POST data).
My problem is that I need to be able to access the controller functions from my model, however I want to prevent someone (using the website directly) from executing the controller function directly.
In Model:
$Contents = new ContentsController();
$message = $Contents->generatePDF($viewVars);
In Controller:
public function generatePDF($input_data)
{
//set the original data and the check result to build the page:
foreach($input_data as $key => $value)
{
$this->set($key, $value);
}
//instantiate a new View class from the controller
$view = new View($this);
$viewData = $view->render('pdf_file', 'pdf');
return $viewData;
}
Which works, however if the user goes and types /Contents/generatePDF into their browser they can access this controller function, so I want to be able to prevent it being accessed from the web directly.
I am using CakePHP 2.X
The simplest approach is to prepend an underscore to the name of your controller method: _generatePDF. Such methods are not accessible via browser.

CakePHP Cakemenu plugin fails after global error due to incorrect string encoding

I am using CakePHP 2.1.2 with PHP 5.3.5 and a plugin called 'Cakemenu' which normally works fine. The plugin stores menus in a db table with the menu link stored as text like
array('plugin'=>null,'controller'=>'assets','action'=>'index');
The helper in the plugin gets those values, then executes this code to convert that text to an array:
//Try to evaluate the link (if starts with array)
if (eregi('^array', $value['Menu']['link'])) {
$code = "\$parse = " . $value['Menu']['link'] . ";";
$result = eval($code);
if (is_array($parse)) {
$value['Menu']['link'] = $parse;
}
}
Everything works fine unless CakePHP is handling an error. For example if I mistype the name of a controller in the browser I should get a menu and then the missing controller message. Instead I get a page full "Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in..." messages pointing to the line with the eval statement. If I printout the variable that is getting eval'ed I see that it has been (incorrectly) encoded with Html entities when it normally does not.
Good string to be eval'ed:
$parse = array('plugin'=>null,'controller'=>'assets','action'=>'index');
Bad string to be eval'ed:
$parse = array('plugin'=>null,'controller'=>'Parts','action'=>'add');
To temporarily fix the problem I added two statements to just replace the offending characters
$value['Menu']['link'] = str_replace( ''','\'',$value['Menu']['link']);
$value['Menu']['link'] = str_replace( '>','>',$value['Menu']['link']);
and everything works great again. Some other pieces of information that might be helpful is that the array of data used to generate the menu is read during the beforeFilter of the app and saved in a view variable and then the menu is generated as an element in the view.
I'm thinking that the error causes CakePHP (or PHP) to skip some loading or configuration process and that causes the string to be mishandled. Any help would be appreciated, thanks
Your beforeFilter() method won't be executed on error pages. You'll have to handle your errors yourself and manually call beforeFilter(). I wrote a blog post on how to use custom error pages - pay close attention to the Controller Callbacks section.

Integrating a file browser into ckeditor & CakePHP

recently found an article in http://hashtwo.com/blog/integrating-a-file-browser-into-ckeditor-cakephp to integrate a file browser into ckeditor (file manager of core five labs )
I followed the steps but i get an error when I click the browse server button,
Missing Controller:
Error: CkeditorController could not be found.
I had the same error at some point during my setup, but I don't seem to recall what was it and how I fixed it. Let me know if my next solution does not fix your problem and I will investigate a little more:
First I followed the following tutorial which worked well, but missed the Authentication part: http://labs.corefive.com/projects/filemanager/
Then I used the tutorial you referenced, except for the last section of code provided. Instead I added the following code directly to my view page: admin_add.ctp
<?php echo $form->textarea('body', array(/*'class'=>'ckeditor', */'id' => 'body', 'class' => 'body')) ?>
<?php
include_once 'ckeditor/ckeditor.php' ;
//require_once 'ckfinder/ckfinder.php' ;
//$initialValue = 'Default value goes here' ;
$ckeditor = new CKEditor() ;
$ckeditor->basePath = '/ckeditor/' ;
$ckeditor->config['filebrowserBrowseUrl'] = '/ckeditor/filemanager/index.html';
$ckeditor->config['filebrowserUploadUrl'] = '/ckeditor/filemanager/connectors/php/filemanager.php';
$ckeditor->config['filebrowserImageBrowseUrl'] = '/ckeditor/filemanager/index.html?type=Images';
$ckeditor->config['filebrowserImageUploadUrl'] = '/ckeditor/filemanager/connectors/php/filemanager.php?command=QuickUpload&type;=Images';
$ckeditor->config['filebrowserWindowWidth'] = '800';
//CKFinder::SetupCKEditor( $ckeditor,'/ckfinder/' ) ;
// This will replace CakePHP textarea listed above.
$ckeditor->replace('body');
?>
Also, for the Auth Section of his tutorial I changed it to match my requirements:
function auth() {
session_name("CAKEPHP");
session_start();
if(isset($_SESSION['Auth']['User']) )
{
//Since CKEditor for me is only used in the admin section
//I make sure only admins can access it, group_id=1
if($_SESSION['Auth']['User']['group_id'] == 1)
{
return true;
}
}
return false;
}
If it tries to find a controller this means it can not access the editors file or folder and instead the dispatcher of CakePHP gets the request and tries to load a fckeditor controller.
This means you'll need to place the editor in the right directory (for example app/webroot/fckedtor/) or use the correct url to access it.

CakePHP - spitting out XML for webservice

What is the best way to spit out XML for webservice in CakePHP?
I have it like the following but it's displaying an empty page.
Sample call /service/config.xml
In Controller
var $helpers = array('Xml');
function config() {
$this->autoRender = false;
$obj = array("response" => array("config" => array(...)));
$objXmlHelper = new XmlHelper();
$objXml = $objXmlHelper->header();
$objXml .= $objXmlHelper->serilize($obj);
echo $objXml;
}
That gives empty page. However, if I echo json_encode($obj); that actually prints out json.
Thanks,
Tee
You probably have an error in your code. My guess is you are not including the XML helper.
Check you CakePHP (app/tmp/logs/) and PHP logs. In addition you may need to set the DEBUG flag to a higher level ( i.e. > 0).
I'd also recommend considering moving such things to a model. Web Services are typically data access layers and that belongs in the Model.

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