How to Generate PDF from MySQL Data using PHP

In this tutorial I explains how to generate PDF from MySQL Data using PHP. You are going to see how to convert MySQL Data into PDF using FPDF library.

What id FPDF ?

FPDF is a PHP class which allows to generate PDF files with  PHP, that is to say without using the PDFlib library. F from FPDF stands for Free: you may use it for any kind of usage and modify it to suit your needs.

FPDF has other advantages: high level functions. Here is a list of its main features:

• Choice of measure unit, page format and margins
• Page header and footer management
• Automatic page break
• Automatic line break and text justification
• Image support (JPEG, PNG and GIF)
• Colors
• Links
• TrueType, Type1 and encoding support
• Page compression

The following snippet show a basic PDF generated with FPDF :

<?php require('fpdf/fpdf.php');
$pdf = new FPDF();
$pdf->AddPage();
$pdf->SetFont('Arial','B',12);
$pdf->Cell(46,12,$column_heading,1);
$pdf->Output();
?>

First a db with empadata. Under db empdata create table tblemployee-

Structure of tblemployee

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `tblemployee` (
`EmpId` int(11) NOT NULL,
`EmpName` varchar(100) DEFAULT NULL,
`EmpDepartment` varchar(100) DEFAULT NULL,
`EmpRegDate` timestamp NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=7 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
INSERT INTO `tblemployee` (`EmpId`, `EmpName`, `EmpDepartment`, `EmpRegDate`) VALUES
(1, 'Anuj kumar', 'Development', '2017-06-08 01:47:41'),
(2, 'Amit ', 'HR', '2017-07-02 09:47:41'),
(3, 'Garima', 'Accountant', '2016-10-14 12:48:31'),
(4, 'John', 'Designing', '2017-07-01 09:48:31'),
(5, 'Rahul', 'Support', '2017-06-14 09:49:00'),
(6, 'Sanjeev', 'Operations', '2017-07-01 04:49:00');
ALTER TABLE `tblemployee`
ADD PRIMARY KEY (`EmpId`);
ALTER TABLE `tblemployee`
MODIFY `EmpId` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,AUTO_INCREMENT=7;

genratepdf.php page

<?php
require_once("config.php");
require('fpdf/fpdf.php');
$pdf = new FPDF();
$pdf->AddPage();
// code for print Heading of tables
$pdf->SetFont('Arial','B',12);
$ret ="SELECT `COLUMN_NAME` FROM `INFORMATION_SCHEMA`.`COLUMNS` WHERE `TABLE_SCHEMA`='empdata' AND `TABLE_NAME`='tblemployee'";
$query1 = $dbh -> prepare($ret);
$query1->execute();
$header=$query1->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_OBJ);
$cnt=1;
if($query1->rowCount() > 0)
{
foreach($header as $heading) {
foreach($heading as $column_heading)
$pdf->Cell(46,12,$column_heading,1);
}}
//code for print data
$sql = "SELECT * from  tblemployee ";
$query = $dbh -> prepare($sql);
$query->execute();
$results=$query->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_OBJ);
$cnt=1;
if($query->rowCount() > 0)
{
foreach($results as $row) {
$pdf->SetFont('Arial','',12);
$pdf->Ln();
foreach($row as $column)
$pdf->Cell(46,12,$column,1);
} }
$pdf->Output();
?>