Generating PDF reports with your application would be a heavy task. I had googled but couldn’t find a good document that explains the same.

However i successfully integrated FPDF with my php application. I would share step-by-step info on how to do it.

I hope you would know the basics on CodeIgniter. Download a copy of CI from its official site.

Step 01 : Download FPDF Fonts from here. Extract the – fpdf_fonts – folder to root folder of your CI project.

Step 02 : Download fpdf library from here. Extract – fpdf – folder into system\application\libraries\

Step 03 : Create a file named init_fpdf.php under system\application\libraries\

init_fpdf.php

<?php  if (!defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');
if ( ! class_exists('fpdf')){
 require_once(BASEPATH.'libraries/fpdf'.EXT);
}

$obj =& get_instance();
$obj->fpdf = new fpdf();
$obj->ci_is_loaded[] = 'fpdf';
?>

You are done with the configuration. Now into Controller.

Step 03 : The code within your controller would be. Say for Example the controller function name is PDF.

function PDF()
{
 $this->load->helper('path');

 $font_directory = './fpdf_fonts/';
 set_realpath($font_directory);

 $this->load->library('fpdf');
 define('FPDF_FONTPATH',$font_directory);
 $this->fpdf->Open();
 $this->fpdf->AddPage();
 $this->fpdf->SetFont('Arial','',8);
 $this->fpdf->Cell(80);
 $this->fpdf->Cell(0,0,'Hello FPDF',0,1,'R');
 $this->fpdf->Output();
}

This would output a PDF for you ! You are done !

If you need to save the PDF file into a folder and get its filename you would need to add some more code.

Drop me a comment it you need that functionality also, would explain it to you.