TCPDF for PHP creates empty PDF when special (slovic) character đ is used

Question

I'm using TCPDF to generate PDFs (obviously). All has been well, but now I'm trying to make a PDF with the character "đ" (which apparently is a slovic character).

The data is user-generated, so I won't know if they're planning on using these type of characters or not - that's why I thought I should use UTF-8. But apparently that's not right.

The PDF gets created, but it's completely empty / white.

Here is my relevant code:

$pdf = new XTCPDF('P', PDF_UNIT, 'Letter', true, 'UTF-8', false);
$pdf->SetPrintHeader(false);
$pdf->SetPrintFooter(false);
$pdf->SetDefaultMonospacedFont(PDF_FONT_MONOSPACED);
$pdf->SetMargins($pageMargin, $pageMargin, $pageMargin); //PDF_MARGIN_LEFT, PDF_MARGIN_TOP, PDF_MARGIN_RIGHT
$pdf->SetAutoPageBreak(TRUE, $pageMargin/2);
$pdf->setImageScale(PDF_IMAGE_SCALE_RATIO);
$pdf->SetFont('helvetica', '', 10, '', true);

$pdf->AddPage();

$pdf->setJPEGQuality(70);

I found this answer but changing to this didn't work either:

$pdf = new XTCPDF('P', PDF_UNIT, 'Letter', false, 'ISO-8859-1', false);

My data pieces (user's name, address...etc) are currently wrapped like this:

trim(mb_convert_encoding($myHtml, "HTML-ENTITIES", "UTF-8"))

---

Questions:

What can I change to make it so that:

1. I can create a PDF with a character like "đ"
2. I can make the settings so it will create regardless of the character(s) the user uses.

Answer 1

David van Driessche has correctly identified the problem; the font in use doesn't support the đ character.

A basic test (note that I saved this PHP script as a UTF8 file):

require './tcpdf/tcpdf.php';

function write($pdf)
{
    $pdf->Write(0, 'test đ   ', '', 0, '', false, 0, false, false, 0);
    $pdf->writeHTML(trim(mb_convert_encoding('test2 đ', "HTML-ENTITIES", "UTF-8")), true, false, true, false, '');
}

$pdf = new TCPDF('P', PDF_UNIT, 'Letter', true, 'UTF-8', false);
$pdf->AddPage();

$pdf->SetFont('helvetica', '', 20);
write($pdf);

$pdf->SetFont('freesans', '', 20);
write($pdf);

$pdf->Output();

This gives me the following PDF output (rendered in Firefox):

Looking at the TCPDF example for including an external UTF-8 text file you can see the following very interesting line:

$pdf->SetFont('freeserif', '', 12);

Strangely freeserif is not listed as one of the standard TCPDF fonts but is in the fonts folder distributed with TCPDF (looking in this folder led me to freesans as well, so I used that in the example above). I can only assume the documentation is not up-to-date.

It seems your choices are to either use freesans or load a third-party font via the AddFont() method.

Edit: I tested the above with a slightly older build of TCPDF: 6.0.099.

Answer 2

Try this before you insert the string into the pdf.

$string = htmlentities( (string) $your_slovic_string, ENT_QUOTES, 'utf-8', FALSE);

You could also use: html_entity_decode().

I ran into a similar problem with user entered content and this cleared it up for me.

Answer 3

In version 6.2.8 I modified just first example by adding character đ and everything seems to work fine. This is the code:

// Include the main TCPDF library (search for installation path).
require_once('tcpdf_include.php');

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

// set document information
$pdf->SetCreator(PDF_CREATOR);
$pdf->SetAuthor('Nicola Asuni');
$pdf->SetTitle('TCPDF Example 001');
$pdf->SetSubject('TCPDF Tutorial');
$pdf->SetKeywords('TCPDF, PDF, example, test, guide');

// set default header data
$pdf->SetHeaderData(PDF_HEADER_LOGO, PDF_HEADER_LOGO_WIDTH, PDF_HEADER_TITLE.' 001', PDF_HEADER_STRING, array(0,64,255), array(0,64,128));
$pdf->setFooterData(array(0,64,0), array(0,64,128));

// set header and footer fonts
$pdf->setHeaderFont(Array(PDF_FONT_NAME_MAIN, '', PDF_FONT_SIZE_MAIN));
$pdf->setFooterFont(Array(PDF_FONT_NAME_DATA, '', PDF_FONT_SIZE_DATA));

// set default monospaced font
$pdf->SetDefaultMonospacedFont(PDF_FONT_MONOSPACED);

// set margins
$pdf->SetMargins(PDF_MARGIN_LEFT, PDF_MARGIN_TOP, PDF_MARGIN_RIGHT);
$pdf->SetHeaderMargin(PDF_MARGIN_HEADER);
$pdf->SetFooterMargin(PDF_MARGIN_FOOTER);

// set auto page breaks
$pdf->SetAutoPageBreak(TRUE, PDF_MARGIN_BOTTOM);

// set image scale factor
$pdf->setImageScale(PDF_IMAGE_SCALE_RATIO);

// set some language-dependent strings (optional)
if (@file_exists(dirname(__FILE__).'/lang/eng.php')) {
    require_once(dirname(__FILE__).'/lang/eng.php');
    $pdf->setLanguageArray($l);
}

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

// set default font subsetting mode
$pdf->setFontSubsetting(true);

// Set font
// dejavusans is a UTF-8 Unicode font, if you only need to
// print standard ASCII chars, you can use core fonts like
// helvetica or times to reduce file size.
$pdf->SetFont('dejavusans', '', 14, '', true);

// Add a page
// This method has several options, check the source code documentation for more information.
$pdf->AddPage();

// Set some content to print
$html = <<<EOD
<h1>Welcome tćžžćččšđ <a href="http://www.tcpdf.org" style="text-decoration:none;background-color:#CC0000;color:black;">
&nbsp;<span style="color:black;">TC</span><span style="color:white;">PDF</span>&nbsp;</a>!</h1>
<i>This is the first example of TCPDF library.</i>
<p>This text is printed using the <i>writeHTMLCell()</i> method but you can also use: <i>Multicell(), writeHTML(), Write(), Cell() and Text()</i>.</p>
<p>Please check the source code documentation and other examples for further information.</p>
<p style="color:#CC0000;">TO IMPROVE AND EXPAND TCPDF I NEED YOUR SUPPORT, PLEASE <a href="http://sourceforge.net/donate/index.php?group_id=128076">MAKE A DONATION!</a></p>
EOD;

// Print text using writeHTMLCell()
$pdf->writeHTMLCell(0, 0, '', '', $html, 0, 1, 0, true, '', true);

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

// Close and output PDF document
// This method has several options, check the source code documentation for more information.
$pdf->Output('example_001.pdf', 'I');

//============================================================+
// END OF FILE
//============================================================+

As for download link for this version, you can find this here.

And this is how it looks as PDF