Re: [fw-mvc] howto: capture action output, stream it as pdf

Hi 

[posting back to list]

On 15 Jul 2009, at 13:36, Sjaak Eenhuis wrote:

Hi there,
Render returns the content of the template, but the layout is always shown, even if I don't ouput anything from the controller.

Yes, you'd need to disable the layout in your controller:

$this->_helper->layout->disableLayout(); 

If I echo out the contents of the template, then these contents are correctly inserted into the layout.

But I want to capture the whole layout, including its content.

Ah, okay. 

(This is just off the top of my head...)

//render the current action's view script via the ViewRenderer

$this->_helper->ViewRenderer->render();

//render the layout manually and capture the output

$output = $this->view->render(path/to/layout.phtml);

//disable the layout 

$this->_helper->layout->disableLayout();

Try that.

Regards,

Carlton

It seems like templates are an output buffer layer (nested buffering), which isn't affected by disableOutputBuffering.

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From: carlton.gibson@noumenal.co.uk
To: exceptione@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: [fw-mvc] howto: capture action output, stream it as pdf
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:10:31 +0100

Hi there, 

Have you tried just assigning the result of the $view's render() call... [editing your code]

On 15 Jul 2009, at 13:04, Exception e wrote:

I've searched the web, the docs and everything and still couldn't find an
answer to a difficult question:
How can you capture the output of an action [to stream it as pdf with
dompdf]?

In a controller I have an action like
<?php
function getPdfAction() {
// use a different layout
$this->getHelper('layout')->setLayout('pdf-layout.phtml');

// I need to call render halfways, so no auto render
$this->getHelper('viewRenderer')->setNoRender();

//1 start capture content. although the docs says it returns a string,
there is no 
// return in render()
// I also don't understand why I need to supply thisController explicitly,
but anyways..

// here:

$outputBuffer = $this->view->render('thisController/template.tpl');

// $outputBuffer should contain what you're after now.

$dompdf = new DOMPDF();
$dompdf->load_html(mb_convert_encoding($outputBuffer, 'html', 'UTF-8'));
$dompdf->render();
$dompdf->stream('hereisyourfile.pdf');
}

That should work no? 

HTH

Carlton

How should I adapt this approach? Would it even be possible to capture the
output of an controller action in that very same action? Or do I need a
postDispatch?

Maybe it would be the nicest to have this html to pdf conversion as an
action helper, but is more important that I can deal with this simpler
problem. 

I did not succeed with
$this->getFrontController()->setParam('disableOutputBuffering', true); in
preDispatch (which is ugly imho).
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