Create PDF on iseries spooled files using Zend_PDF and i5 Toolkit for PHP

Zend_Pdf is a PDF manipulation framework for PHP available on iseries via the Zend Core. It can help any PHP application dynamically create or modify PDF documents.

Zend_Pdf offers the following features:
Create or load documents
Manipulate pages within a document
Drawing lines, rectangles, polygons, circles, ellipses and sectors, images and rotations
Use of the 14 built-in fonts or TrueType fonts.


include the Zend.pdf framework in your PHP code:
require_once 'Zend/Pdf.php'

Create a PDF class, an instance of the Zend_Pdf object:

$pdf = new Zend_Pdf();

A document can be loaded from a file using the instance:
$pdf = Zend_PDF::load($filename);

Changes to the PDF document can be saved:
$pdf->save($filename, true);

Zend Core for i5/OS includes the i5 Toolkit for PHP. This gives access to i5 function from PHP. i5_spool allows administration of spool files. 


Combining this with Zend_PDF will give iseries and i5/os users free coversion of spooled files to PDFs

PHP on the as400

Timothy Prickett Morgan discusses the increasing use of PHP on System i.

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh042009-story01.html

After a year of work in the wake of the alliance, Zend and IBM started shipping a beta version of the Zend Core for i5/OS, which ran in the PASE AIX runtime environment inside i5/OS V5R4. In August of 2006, Zend Core for i5/OS became generally available and in a short time, there were thousands of downloads of the software, which IBM picked up the tab for on behalf of V5R4 shops that wanted to download a PHP engine and integrate it with their i boxes. IBM gave out statistics for downloads every couple of months, but since the creation of the Power Systems division, which converged the System i and System p lines last April, IBM has been pretty mum in terms of Zend Core for i downloads. The latest number that I have heard is that there have been 12,000 cumulative downloads of Zend Core for various i platforms, including machines running OS/400 V5R3, i5/OS V5R4, and i 6.1

According to this Gartner data, the vast majority of PHP developers in 2007 were part-time developers and hobbyists, with a small number of corporate PHP developers. But by 2013, Gartner expects there to be millions of professional PHP developers at software vendors and in IT shops, with the base of hobbyists and part-timers being about the same. And we all know who is going to be spending money on PHP tools, creating real-world, enterprise-class PHP applications, and making a living from PHP

Building Dynamic Web Applications on i5 with PHP

Building Dynamic Web Applications on i5 with PHP

View more presentations from John Coggeshall.

Integrating PHP With System-i using Web Services

Integrating PHP With System-i using Web Services

View more presentations from Ivo Jansch.

Zend PHP for IBM i demonstration at COMMON 2009

Zend Core, Zend studio for Eclipse IDE, and the Zend Platform demo by Mike Pavlak of Zend

An Introduction to PHP

eServer Magazine: "Misconceptions about the iSeries and AS/400 servers have been around almost as long as the platform itself. Some outsiders continue to view the iSeries server as old technology incapable of allowing users to do anything new and interesting.
Of course, as users of the server and readers of this magazine should know, the truth is that the iSeries server supports a range of cutting-edge technologies. But even those who know the iSeries server may be unaware of everything it can do and every new and useful tool it can support.
Enter PHP. This versatile scripting language (its a recursive acronym for Hypertext Preprocessor) can be used to simplify many iSeries programming tasks."

Getting Started
To run PHP on the iSeries server, the HTTP Server (powered by Apache) and OS/400* PASE are needed. OS/400 PASE is an environment that matches AIX* system calls to low-level OS/400 system level calls so that AIX programs can run on the iSeries server. You must download source code from the PHP Web site.