Reusable Header and Footer by extending TCPDF library in CodeIgniter

We use PDF to generate various kinds of reports and in most of the report we have fixed header and footer representing company’s information.

I will show you how to create a common header and footer function with CodeIgniter Library which extends Tcpdf library

Prerequisites:

1. CodeIgniter Installed
2. TCPDF library

To create a library in CodeIgniter, create a new php file under application/libraries folder. I will call it Pdfheaderfooter.php [first letter capital]. You can use whatever name you want.

Add tcpdf library where you have them added. I have added it under application/libraries folder. So in my Pdfheaderfooter.php file I will have below line:

require_once('tcpdf/tcpdf.php');

require_once('tcpdf/tcpdi.php');

If you do not have tcpdf library, you can get it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/tcpdf/files

Next is to create class that extends this library. Create a class with same name as php file:

class Pdfheaderfooter extends TCPDI {

}

Under this class you can define your header and footer functions:

<?php 

if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

require_once('tcpdf/tcpdf.php');

require_once('tcpdf/tcpdi.php');

class Pdfheaderfooter extends TCPDI {

 

  //Page header

  public function Header() {

    $html = 'Some Header';

 

    $this->SetFontSize(8);

    $this->WriteHTML($html, true, 0, true, 0);

  }

 

  // Page footer

  public function Footer() {

    // Position at 15 mm from bottom

    $this->SetY(-15);

    $html = 'Some Footer';

 

    $this->SetFontSize(8);

    $this->WriteHTML($html, true, 0, true, 0);

  }

}

/* End of file Pdfheaderfooter.php */

This will use custom header and footer defined in Pdfheaderfooter.php file when pdf is generated.

Now to generate a pdf with this custom header and footer, you need to load this library maybe in the controller.

$this->load->library('Pdfheaderfooter');

// create new PDF document
$pdf = new Pdfheaderfooter(PDF_PAGE_ORIENTATION, PDF_UNIT, PDF_PAGE_FORMAT, true, 'UTF-8', false);


// set font
$pdf->SetFont('times', 'BI', 12);

// add a page
$pdf->AddPage();

// set some text to print
$txt = "This is some HTML"

// print a block of text using Write()
$pdf->WriteHTML(0, $txt, '', 0, 'C', true, 0, false, false, 0);

// ---------------------------------------------------------

//Close and output PDF document
$pdf->Output('example.pdf', 'I');