PDF Creation Tutorial

danielb21 · February 2009

Good afternoon everyone!

I have written an intro to PDF tutorial for those that are interested in PDF interactivity within your iPhone apps. This first tutorial, shows how to simply create a PDF that contains an image, some text and a border around the page.

Ok, on to the goods! There are two custom methods in the PDFViewController.m file that you will be looking at mostly. The first is CreatePDFFile. This method does exactly what it says - creates a PDF file. The second method is called createPDF, and is an IBAction method hooked to an UIButton in IB. Upon touching the button this method calls our CreatePDFFile method.

Important - there is no output after clicking the button, meaning you will not see the resulting PDF displayed on the phone. I can create a second tutorial for that purpose, but it seemed like most people were only interested in the creation of the file.

In order to view the resulting PDF go to:
Users/YourUserName/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/User/Applications

In this directory sort by Date Modified. If the example project here was the last app that you ran it will be at the top of this directory. Simply navigate to the documents directory of the PDF example app and you will be able to see the PDF it creates.

Let me know if you have any questions!

P.S. So it seems that the example project was larger than the allowed size for attachments. I will get the whole project up on the web for download soon, but in the meantime I have included the class files which is all you should need.

piratemc74 · February 2009

Very interested in this. I know you attached the class files, but, "explanation" is good too :-)

Also, once the PDF is created, is there a way to then send it to the email tool? Does Apple allow that?

Thanks!

Asa · February 2009

I am very interested to see this all the way...Please make part II and if possible a video :)

Thanks!

meowmix23F · February 2009

piratemc74;49836 said:
Very interested in this. I know you attached the class files, but, "explanation" is good too :-)

Also, once the PDF is created, is there a way to then send it to the email tool? Does Apple allow that?

Thanks!

You'd have to use the mailto: url scheme to open up mail.app, and, on non-jailbroken phones it is impossible to use the attachment paramter of mailto:, so you'l have to write an SMTP client.

TheFury · February 2009

meowmix23F;53119 said:
You'd have to use the mailto: url scheme to open up mail.app, and, on non-jailbroken phones it is impossible to use the attachment paramter of mailto:, so you'l have to write an SMTP client.

There is open source code that allows you to send an email with attachment. You can either have the user set up the parameters, or you can just set up a mail account that handles the outgoing mail.

I found the source somewhere on this messageboard. It is available via SVN. I tried it and it works well. I looked for the thread and can't seem to find it. Maybe someone else has the link.

meowmix23F · February 2009

TheFury;53154 said:
There is open source code that allows you to send an email with attachment. You can either have the user set up the parameters, or you can just set up a mail account that handles the outgoing mail.

I found the source somewhere on this messageboard. It is available via SVN. I tried it and it works well. I looked for the thread and can't seem to find it. Maybe someone else has the link.

Could you upload your copy of this code to sendspace or some other service?

I'd like to see this.

TheFury · February 2009

meowmix23F;53274 said:
Could you upload your copy of this code to sendspace or some other service?

I'd like to see this.

Here is the thread I was referring:
http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/iphone-sdk-development/9012-sending-attachments-email-iphone-app.html

glider · February 2009

Thanks! But any progress on a viewer for multi page PDF's ?

Using CGPDFPageGetDrawingTransform(page, kCGPDFCropBox, bounds, 0, true) - if you want to zoom in on large PDF it seems you are out of luck ?

tkilmer · February 2009

Throw it in a webview. Not sure if that allows you to view multi-page pdfs but I know you can view PDFs in UIWebViews.

glider · February 2009

Thanks - yes, found that out. The UIWebView automatically handles multi page pdf's as well (besides zooming, and it looks GOOD unlike the lower CGPDF stuff).

Coaster · March 2009

This is great, thank you, any more information regarding this subject would be greatly appeciated.

I have nearly finished the main section of my app, and need to display about 25 values on a pdf, this pdf needs to be viewable though the App, but does not need to be enlarged.

I am hoping that then i can take a screenshot of the page, and print it via HB's Photo printer app. Would this be viable, or would some other format be better for this type of thing?

Thanks

ledavid71 · March 2009

Hi I would like to know how you can display the pdf file on a view Im kind of lost.

Thanks

danielb21 · March 2009

Hey everyone,

I've been extremely busy the past few weeks, so my apologies for being absent on this thread.

I will create another tutorial that covers viewing a PDF after creation, and will try to have it up either Saturday or Sunday of this week.

Dan

ThirtyOne · March 2009

This is a great example! Thanks for the help.

sunny dee · May 2009

I have a long string that I want to add to the pdf.

Any ideas on how to wrap the text? Thanks.

Sunny

danielb21 · May 2009

sunny dee;86066 said:
I have a long string that I want to add to the pdf.

Any ideas on how to wrap the text? Thanks.

Sunny

The quickest way to do this is inside a for statement that takes a substring of your text for every x number of characters. This isn't a complete and robust text wrapping solution though. It's on my list of things to complete and I'll share my full solution when I'm done. :)

prameshu · May 2009

danielb21;86077 said:
The quickest way to do this is inside a for statement that takes a substring of your text for every x number of characters. This isn't a complete and robust text wrapping solution though. It's on my list of things to complete and I'll share my full solution when I'm done. :)

Hi,
I have around 30 fields to display in the PDF file one by one. So could you please tell me how I can insert a newline character in the content...

thanks,
Ramesh.

prameshu · May 2009

Hi Sunny,
If you have this solution, could you please share it with me...
thanks,
Ramesh.

sunny dee;86066 said:
I have a long string that I want to add to the pdf.

Any ideas on how to wrap the text? Thanks.

Sunny

danielb21 · May 2009

Refer to post #25 for this.

prameshu · May 2009

thanks Daniel.

fish · May 2009

Cheers, very help tutorial.

chaseacton · June 2009

Hey, if anyone knows how to view a locally stored pdf in a webview, please contact me. Im thankful fore any help and a xcode project would be very appreciated.

[email]chaseacton@gmail.com[/email]

decay · June 2009

danielb21;87557 said:
Ok, here is the text wrapping solution that I am using. This is very basic and ensures that the wrap happens at a "space".

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Actually, it does not have to be that complicated. You can use:

[NSString drawInRect:]

to get what you want. Just use the PDF context you are drawing to, and you have to perform a coordinate conversion, but if you make the rect high enough (you can calc this using [NSString sizeWithFont], all wrapping is done for you.

danielb21 · June 2009

chaseacton;95650 said:
Hey, if anyone knows how to view a locally stored pdf in a webview, please contact me. Im thankful fore any help and a xcode project would be very appreciated.

[email]chaseacton@gmail.com[/email]

Hey Chase,

There is another tutorial that I wrote that shows exactly how to do this. :) You'll find it a little further down in the tutorials section.

Thanks,
Dan

danielb21 · June 2009

decay;95669 said:
Actually, it does not have to be that complicated. You can use:

[NSString drawInRect:]

to get what you want. Just use the PDF context you are drawing to, and you have to perform a coordinate conversion, but if you make the rect high enough (you can calc this using [NSString sizeWithFont], all wrapping is done for you.

Hi decay,

Have you actually done what you are suggesting successfully or just basing your response on documentation provided by Apple? If you have, it would be greatly appreciated if you post your solution with a working example here and I will add it as a part of the tutorial with appropriate credit to you. :)

My experience with [NSString drawInRect:] in a PDFContext has been that it will not draw, citing an "invalid context". Had that not been the case I would have been using that all along.

Thanks,
Dan

*EDIT* Figured out how to use this, refer to post #25.

danielb21 · June 2009

Spent more time today exploring the [NSString drawInRect:] method to see if I could get it to work, and I now have a working solution. The key is that you have to push the graphics context onto the stack. Below is how it works:

NSString *string = @\"Text to print.\";

UIGraphicsPushContext(context);
CGContextTranslateCTM(context, 0, 20);
CGContextScaleCTM(context, 1.0, -1.0);
[string drawInRect:CGRectMake(0, 0, 300, 200) withFont:[UIFont fontWithName:@\"Verdana\" size:9]];
UIGraphicsPopContext();

So, the above code block pushes the context onto the stack, reverses the coordinates so that the text is drawn correctly, and then uses the drawInRect: withFont: method to draw the text, and finally calls the UIGraphicsPopContext() method.

It's important to note that each time you call UIGraphicsPushContext(context); you must also call the pop context method, otherwise you'll be left with nothing.

Thanks to decay for pushing me to investigate this more and enjoy everyone!

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