Although the release of Zend Framework 2.0 is a long way off — currently there is no official release plan — contributors are encouraged to port their components as soon as possible.

Therefore, I am delighted to announce that you can download a version of \Zend\Service\LiveDocx, complete with the latest development version of Zend Framework 2.0 from my account at GitHub.

In particular, take a look at the shipped demo applications, in the directory /demos/Zend/Service/LiveDocx. They illustrate how to use all parts of the framework and offer a good introduction to the usage of namespaces in PHP 5.3, if this topic is new to you.

To whet your appetite, below is the bitmaps demo:

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use Zend\Date\Date;
use Zend\Service\LiveDocx\MailMerge;
 
$mailMerge = new MailMerge();
 
$mailMerge->setUsername('myUsername')
          ->setPassword('myPassword');
 
$mailMerge->setLocalTemplate('template.docx');
 
$mailMerge->assign('software', 'Magic Graphical Compression Suite v1.9')
          ->assign('licensee', 'Daï Lemaitre')
          ->assign('company',  'Megasoft Co-operation')
          ->assign('date',     Date::now()->toString(Date::DATE_LONG))
          ->assign('time',     Date::now()->toString(Date::TIME_LONG))
          ->assign('city',     'Lyon')
          ->assign('country',  'France');
 
$mailMerge->createDocument();
 
// Get all bitmaps
$bitmaps = $mailMerge->getAllBitmaps(100, 'png');      // zoomFactor, format
 
foreach ($bitmaps as $pageNumber => $bitmapData) {
    $filename = sprintf('document-page-%d.png', $pageNumber);
    file_put_contents($filename, $bitmapData);
}
 
unset($mailMerge);

Note, this is development code and should not yet be used in production applications.

Alessandro Nuzzo has just published a great introduction about Zend_Service_LiveDocx. If you are able to read Italian take a look at the following:

Mi capita spesso di dover generare dinamicamente dei file PDF o DOC. Alla ricerca di una soluzione che mi facilitasse il lavoro mi sono imbattuto in LiveDocx, un servizio basato su SOAP che permette di generare dei documenti partendo da dei template creati con un word processor. Solitamente quando devo generare dei PDF utilizzo 2 approcci: o l’”HTML-to-PDF Approach” oppure il “Programmatic Approach”.

Continue reading:

• LiveDocx: template based document generation

Download Zend Framework 1.10.0 Full and read the updated documentation on ZendFramework.com.

You can find Zend_Service_LiveDocx_* at the following locations in the distribution tree:

Source code

/library/Zend/Service/LiveDocx.php
/library/Zend/Service/LiveDocx/MailMerge.php
/library/Zend/Service/LiveDocx/Exception.php

Unit tests

/tests/Zend/Service/LiveDocx/LiveDocxTest.php
/tests/Zend/Service/LiveDocx/MailMergeTest.php
/tests/Zend/Service/LiveDocx/MailMerge/*

Demonstration applications

/demos/Zend/Service/LiveDocx/*

I really recommend taking a look at the demonstration applications, as they illustrate all of Zend_Service_LiveDocx functionality.

You can check that your server environment is set up correctly to run Zend_Service_LiveDocx, by executing check-environment.php in the directory /demos/Zend/Service/LiveDocx/.

I would like to thank Matthew Weier O’Phinney, Zend Framework Project Lead and all other members of the Zend Framework community, who have contributed to Zend_Service_LiveDocx.

As of the first alpha version of Zend Framework 1.10, the functionality of Tis_Service_LiveDocx is available directly in the Zend Framework in Zend_Service_LiveDocx.

As of today, the use of Tis_Service_LiveDocx is deprecated. Instead use Zend_Service_LiveDocx.

With the exception of the constructor, the API of Zend_Service_LiveDocx is 100% backward compatible to that of Tis_Service_LiveDocx.

At the wish of the Zend Framework community, the constructor was updated from:

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// deprecated - do not use
$mailMerge = new Tis_Service_LiveDocx_MailMerge('myUsername', 'myPassword');

to:

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// correct - do use
$mailMerge = new Zend_Service_LiveDocx_MailMerge(
    array (
        'username' => 'myUsername',
        'password' => 'myPassword'
    )
);
 
// alternatively
$mailMerge = new Zend_Service_LiveDocx_MailMerge();
 
$mailMerge->setUsername('myUsername')
          ->setPassword('myPassword');

I would encourage you to update your projects to use the Zend_Service_LiveDocx family of classes.

If you need any assistance in migrating your code, please post a support request into the support forum.

Please go to the download section of ZendFramework.com and download Zend Framework 1.10.0 Beta 1 Full.

The paths to the demonstration applications and documentation remain the same as listed in the previous post.

Please go to the download section of ZendFramework.com and download Zend Framework 1.10.0 Alpha Full.

The paths to the demonstration applications and documentation remain the same as listed in the previous post.

Using Subversion (SVN) you can anonymously checkout the Standard Trunk repository:

svn checkout http://framework.zend.com/svn/framework/standard/trunk/ ./

You can find Zend_Service_LiveDocx_* at the following locations:

Source code

/library/Zend/Service/LiveDocx.php
/library/Zend/Service/LiveDocx/MailMerge.php
/library/Zend/Service/LiveDocx/Exception.php

Unit tests

/tests/Zend/Service/LiveDocx/LiveDocxTest.php
/tests/Zend/Service/LiveDocx/MailMergeTest.php
/tests/Zend/Service/LiveDocx/MailMerge/*

End-User documentation (as raw XML)

/documentation/manual/en/module_specs/Zend_Service_LiveDocx.xml
/documentation/manual/en/figures/zend.service.livedocx.*

Demonstration applications

/demos/Zend/Service/LiveDocx/*

Learn more about the Zend Framework repository in the official wiki.

I would like to thank Matthew Weier O’Phinney, Zend Framework Project Lead for promoting Zend_Service_LiveDocx to the Standard Trunk repository.

The next and final step will be Zend_Service_LiveDocx becoming part of the Zend Framework 1.10 distribution file.

LiveDocx is the tool of choice for the invoice generation process. But how do you efficiently get a printed copy of the invoices to the customer? One way would be to concatenate all the created invoices into one massive PDF file and then dispatch this PDF file to the printers.

Backend concatenation

As of LiveDocx 1.2, it has been possible to assign multiple records in the form of a nested associative array to a template. The result is one concatenated document, containing the populated template (one per nested sub-array).

This backend concatenation approach is a fantastic way to create hundreds of documents in one run, but in the case that your application demands thousands or even tens of thousands of documents, the amount of data that has be transfered via SOAP in one request does get extremely large and depending upon your Internet connection, can become a little slow and consequently burdensome.

This blog post offers a new approach to generate documents using LiveDocx on the backend, but perform the concatenation locally. The following screenshot illustrates the sample application in action (click to zoom):

The code has been written for the official Zend_Service_LiveDocx_MailMerge component, which is currently in the Standard Trunk. By modifying the constructor, however, you can easily make it work with Tis_Service_Service_MailMerge.

Generate remotely, concatenate locally

In the sample application, documents are created by the backend LiveDocx server and concatenated locally, using either pdftk or Ghostscript in the function concatenatePdfFilenames(). This approach has the advantage that only the singular documents are transfered from the backend LiveDocx service via SOAP to the server and not the entire concatenated document, which theoretically can be many gigabytes in size. The disadvantage, of course, is that one or these tools must be installed on the local server. However, as both are open source and available for Windows and Linux, this should not pose such a problem. Often they will already be installed on your server.

If both pdftk and Ghostscript are available, it is recommended to use pdftk, as it is considerably faster and uses less memory. Ghostscript, on the other hand, generates slightly small PDF files.

Try it out yourself

The source code to this sample application is located at /demos/Zend/Service/LiveDocx/MailMerge/license-agreement/generate-document-concat.php of the Standard Trunk. Simply checkout the entire repository or update your local working copy. If you are just curious about what the code looks like, you can view the source code here: generate-document-concat.php.

If you have any questions about this local concatenation approach, please post into the comments below.

It is geared towards PHP web developers, who who are getting started with the framework, and those who are already are using ZF for their daily work, but want to learn more.

The book is called:
Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development.

I will be posting a review in due course, but to whet your appetite, you can download a sample chapter.

From the publisher’s web site:

The Zend Framework has a flexible architecture that lets you build modern web applications and web services easily. The MVC components make the maintenance and testing of your applications easier. However, it is not only an MVC framework for developers. It also provides an easy-to-use high-quality component library that is designed to be used the way you want, picking up specific components without requiring the use of whole framework.

It’s easy to get started and produce a powerful and professional looking web site when you’ve got this book to hand. Taking you through a real-life application, it covers the major Zend Framework components, as well as throwing light on the best practices and design issues faced when building complex MVC applications.

This book takes you through detailed examples as well as covering the foundations you will need to get the most out of the Zend Framework. From humble beginnings you will progress through the book and slowly build upon what you have learned previously. By the end, you should have a good understanding of the Zend Framework, its components, and the issues involved in implementing a Zend Framework based application.

Happy reading!

The following article examines Zend_Service_LiveDocx_MailMerge in depth:

• PDF Generation with Zend Framework

When ZF 1.10 is released, Zend_Service_LiveDocx_MailMerge will replace Tis_Service_LiveDocx_MailMerge. With the exception of the parameters in the constructor, the public methods and functionality of the two classes are identical.

I will post more on how to migrate code from the old to new class, when ZF 1.10 is released.