Posted by AK on 10/06/00 11:41

Kinda new - well ,really new, but here goes.

I have a mySQL database that resides on the third party commercial web
server/service away from our offices. We upload data to that database, and
then use scripts to extract various data elements and place them on an
invoice which we email out to customers. (an invoice showing items,
quantity, amounts etc.)

No problem with extraction and sending of the email. Problem comes in that
the formatting of the email is not "locked down. What I mean by this is that
the columns of data that are supposed to line up, do so exactly when viewed
on email program #1, but then are misaligned whe viewed with email program
#2. (Took us a week to figure out it was the email viewer at the customers
that was causing the "bad" behaviour.)


Someone said that email formatting was squirrely like that and that we
should consider creating a pdf invoice and then sending that out. This is
what we want to try. (Yes, we can send a word document, etx, but want to try
this pdf thing right now)

I see in the php manual I got at the bookstore that pph can write data to a
pdf, BUT, to me it seems like a pretty brute force raw-code method - almost
as bad as coding an html webpage entirely by hand, instead of using a html
page generator/widard.

Question - Is there some utility/widard that folks use on the web server end
to get data out of the My SQL and onto a pdf , which I would then send by
email?

Seems like ther must be, but, I am so in-initiated that I don't know what to
look for. I think I am needing a utility that will write the appropriate php
script based on where I set up tables etc on the pdf template page.

Thanks.

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