Not able to run wkhtmltopdf commad through exec() function in php but same command works on command line

Question

I am using wkhtmltopdf to generate pdf's from html, I am trying to run the below command through PHP exec() function, but its does not generate the pdf, I does not show any error though. But when i ran the same command through command line it works.

Below is my PHP code taht I am using to execute the pdf generate command.

$command = "wkhtmltopdf -s A4 /inputhtmlfilepath/test.html /outputfilepath/output.pdf";
exec($command);

Some info about my setup:

Operating system - Ubuntu 12.04

PHP Version - 5.4.3

Any help would be appreciated, Thanks.

Use the full path to the files; make sure that the web server user has rights to the dirs/files. — Digital Chris, Sep 23 '14 at 13:31
@Digitial, I have given the full path for both the input and output files and the folder has full permission to all users, set to 777 now. Still no luck. — Tapaswi Panda, Sep 23 '14 at 13:34
Use the [output and return var](http://php.net/manual/en/function.exec.php) options to see what is happening. — Digital Chris, Sep 23 '14 at 13:41
@Digital, I did checked with that, its shown me "wkhtmltopdf: cannot connect to X server" — Tapaswi Panda, Sep 24 '14 at 13:23
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9604625/wkhtmltopdf-cannot-connect-to-x-server — Digital Chris, Sep 24 '14 at 13:27
Yes, I followed this discussion, tried installing sudo apt-get install xvfb. but that did not help...Trying other options.... — Tapaswi Panda, Sep 24 '14 at 13:50

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 25 '14 at 11:48

If you are getting 'cannot connect to X server error' then please try this.

1.Install the xvfb package

 sudo apt-get install xvfb

2.Create a file as 'wkhtmltopdf.sh' and add the following code to that and save

xvfb-run -a -s "-screen 0 640x480x16" wkhtmltopdf "$@"

3.Then move this file to /usr/local/bin and give permissions

sudo chmod 555 /usr/local/bin/wkhtmltopdf.sh

4.Then try creating pdf by running the command.

/usr/local/bin/wkhtmltopdf.sh input.html output.pdf

Not able to run wkhtmltopdf commad through exec() function in php but same command works on command line

1 Answers1