Topic awaiting preservation: PHP: which PDF Api

hello,
i need to dynamically generate multiple pages PDFs from texts in a database.

i see there are a couple of PHP PDF APIs and i dont know which one to choose. here is a list:

php->pdf : seems to be the best, but has a very expensive license, which i cant afford.
php->ClibPDF : seems to be badly documented.
http://www.ros.co.nz/pdf/
http://www.fpdf.org/
http://www.gnuvox.com/pdf4php/
http://www.potentialtech.com/ppl.php
http://www.stillhq.com//panda/

so before i start testing them all out, i wanted to ask if you guys have any good or bad experiences with them? just tell me everything you know.
thank you.

Well, I have had good expierences with the one from http://www.ros.co.nz/pdf/ - of course it's a complex format,
but the code is sound and it can be extended to do pretty much everything you'd need for a full pdf print catalog.

Hmm does that have any license TP?

thanks TP, ill give it a try.

on its sourceforge page it says:

quote:

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License : Public Domain

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hmm interesting... surely wouldnt be free... if so thats impressive - maybe it requires some extra modules like the php pdf module which i hear is expensive?

Will have to look into it more

It doesn't need any thing... It simply creates (largish) strings which happen to be valid pdf modules.

It indeed has been a lot of work to create, judged by the amount of in-depth code - but then again, pdf mostly is not magic, just a rather complex, but well specified format.

I even extended that class myself for a specificy project to do things like double column printing and tables and the like. It ain't rocket sience.

I used www.fpdf.org last year, it suited my needs for making fairly simple pdf invoices. Lots of users have written routines to extend the capabilities too.