printing

[chuckz]

Using PHP and MySQL, how difficult would it be to generate and print reports using the MySQL data? I would like to generate reports similar to a spreadsheet with headers and columns etc. Could I accomplish this with PHP? Are there scripts or examples I could look at?

[wjensen]

That depends on what exactly it is you're trying to do. You can just write a standard PHP script that is accessed through a web browser and use your browser's print feature. One problem with this method is that it is difficult to predict where page breaks will be, since there is no page break in HTML.

If you're running on a Windows system with PHP >=4.0.4 you can use the printer library.

<?
$handle = printer_open();
printer_write($handle, "Text to print");
printer_close($handle);
?>

The downside to this method is that it might get complicated if you're printing anything but plain text. I don't really know because I've never tried.

If you're on a Unix/Linux/etc. system you can write the data to a file and use

<?
system("lp $filename");
?>

I'm a Linux newbie, so I don't know a lot about other ways of doing this in Linux. I know you can do it with postscript somehow.

If you're on a Windows system with MS Office and want to use HTML to format the output, but still want the process automated (and don't mind not having page breaks), try this:

<?
system("C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\msohtmed.exe /p $filename");
?>

You would still have to write your output to a file first.

For more details check out www.php.net/printer

[barand]

Another option if want to use php to generate the reports is to write a pdf file.

FPDF is free and easy to use. The site has samples.

You could also consider a reporting package like Crystal which would connect directly to your mysql db to create reports.