Installed but no output

[hycday]

Hi,

I discovered your script and wanted to test it locally (Windows), so I did the following :

• first I installed pdftk (it works, tested via command line).
• then I installed composer, chose the php.exe.
• then I downloaded php-pdftk and unpacked it in http://localhost/pdftk
• then I opened command prompt in the pdftk folder and typed : composer require mikehaertl/php-pdftk and it created the vendor folder
• I created an index.php file and had the following in it:

require_once('f:\pdftk\vendor\autoload.php');
use mikehaertl\pdftk\Pdf;
$pdf = new Pdf('a.pdf');
$pdf->fillForm('data.fdf')
 ->needAppearances();
   if (!$pdf->saveAs('bc.pdf')) {
    $error = $pdf->getError();
 echo $error;
}

• then I opened http://localhost/pdftk and the page displayed

Failed without error message: pdftk A="a.pdf" fill_form "data.fdf" output "C:\Windows\Temp\tmpE5BA.tmp.pdf" drop_xfa need_appearances

I tried as well with the functions to Generate FDF, to Get PDF data and to Fill form from FDF, and for each time, the page was blank with no errors.

Could you please tell me if I did something wrong in the steps, forgot something or how to debut it as I am certain that your script works but just don't know what is happening in my setup...

PS : just for info, when I do "pdftk a.pdf fill_form data.fdf output bc.pdf" in a command line, it works perfectly and the bc.pdf is well filled.

Thank you VERY much for your precious help.

hycday

[mikehaertl]

You need to set the path to your pdftk command, see https://github.com/mikehaertl/php-pdftk#execution

[hycday]

I just did and got the following :

Error: Unable to find file. Error: Failed to open PDF file: a.pdf Errors encountered. No output created. Done. Input errors, so no output created.

I guess that this is due to the fact that the path is

c:\Program Files (x86)\PDFtk Server\bin\pdftk.exe

but my server is on another hard drive (f:)

and on a an actual server the pdftk path might be outside of the domain (equivalent to this c:\ f:\ situation). So how to handle that ?

[mikehaertl]

The hard truth is: We don't really support Windows systems. While it basically should work, you're on your own, if it doesn't. You can check the underlying https://github.com/mikehaertl/php-shellcommand library, which we use to execute the command. We have some notes for windows users there.

There also was an issue with spaces in command names, see mikehaertl/php-shellcommand#1.

If you find out how to make it work, feel free to report back here, so that we can add some more tips to the README for windows users.

[PRodO5lNk5]

I managed to get the package to work on windows 10, the main issue (for me) was the path to the pdf template file, it must be apsolute e.g:
$pdf->fillForm('c:\Program Files (x86)\somefolder\pdf-template.pdf')
I hope it helps

[JavierCabezas]

I want to share what worked with me on windows 10.

1. Installed PDFTk (https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/)
2. Added pdftk to cli. The installer gives you the option to do this while installing. You can check if the program is added to your command line by executing the pdftk on powershell.
3. Initialize Pdftk by doing:
   $pdftk = new PDFTK($pdf_url, [ 'command' => $pdftk_path, 'useExec' => true ]);

• $pdf_url must be an absolute path.
• $pdftk_path must be the path of your pdftk executable (Ex: 'C:\Program Files (x86)\PDFtk\bin\pdftk.exe')

And thats it!

[mikehaertl]

Added a note about setting the path on windows to the readme.