RE: [PHP] Printing invoices

Thanks, I had something similar in mind. The reason I was hoping to use RTF is so the customer can easily create new documents and be able to fill in the variable data themselves. Example. First Name: $fname So they would actually type the PHP variable and I could easily read in the RTF file from database. As much as I appreciate everones suggestions thus far, nobody has yet to address the issue of actually printing the data. I have no need to save and/or display the form, I only need to send it to the server side printer (optionally client side as well, if possible). It's looking as if I will have to parse through the RTF and convert it to the built in PHP printer functions, but I feel this is ineffecient and therefore not necessarily the best solution. Thanks to everyone so far!! -----Original Message----- From: Justin French [mailto:justin.french@indent.com.au] Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2004 10:04 PM To: php_AT_bskolb_DOT_com@ensim1.1hp.net Cc: php-general@lists.php.net Subject: Re: [PHP] Printing invoices On 21/06/2004, at 9:30 AM, bskolb wrote: > Could someone direct me to a printing solution from a static document > that would render variable data elements to be sent to a printer > queue? I was thing perhaps of an RTF for the static page, but can't > seem to locate any way of inserting the variable data, then spit out > each occurrance to a printer. You could read the contents of an RTF file straight into a PHP variable, then perform some regular expressions on it. You'd have to set-up some naming conventions, but replacing something like {FIRSTNAME} with the contents of $myInvoiceData['FIRSTNAME'] would be pretty basic stuff. I'd probably use preg_replace_callback() with a callback to a function which: a) attempts to match {THIS_BIT} with $myInvoiceData['THIS_BIT'] b) if no match, either - return nothing (it replaces {THIS_BIT} with nothing), or - return {THIS_BIT} (no replacing done -- probably safer for debugging and the mysteries of RTF. c) if there's a match return the value of $myInvoiceData['THIS_BIT'], replacing {THIS_BIT} Let me know if you need more help, but http://php.net/preg_replace_callback should give you enough pointers. --- Justin French http://indent.com.au -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php