Using PHP, MYSQL to create printed reports

Hi,

I’m developing a site using PHP and MySQL and there is a requirement to produce reports which will have to be highly formatted (including charts) and printed. I have searched the web and cannot find a solution. I have tried the PEAR Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer module but this only creates simple spreadsheets (no charts), JPGRAPH (have had problems with using this) and looked at using OpenOffice as a background process (I have used this technique before but with VB and Excel). Essentially what we need is a process where the user can make a selection on a WEB page which will result in php interrogate a database, creating a report, converting it to PDF and delivering it to the user. Does anyone know of such a solution?

Thanks.

I am ignorant when it comes to having done any of this myself - but I would suggest you check out one of the php flash libraries available such as ming ( www.php.net/ming) or a VML library for php.

Have a look at PHP/SWF Charts, its not quite clear on what boundaries the reports have to be generated from, i’ll assume these to be relatively basic. PDF reports would most likely have to be custom built… [url=“http://www.ros.co.nz/pdf/”][color=#551a8b]R&OS: [b]pdf[/b] class[/color]

I’ve just begun reading up on this stuff…so I could be way off, but isn’t this what PDFlib does? It looks like you can create PDFs on the fly and position things very accurately, or am I mistaken?

Have a look at this! I have this task on my to do list. This is a PDF creation tool in PHP which describes how to do it. I havnt started on this part of my project yet but I found this useful while I was researching.

Keith