run File_PDF on php 8 (upgrade to Horde_Pdf)

Question

I use the pear extension File_PDF in an old PHP app I maintain.

It seems like the last version by that module is version 0.3.3 from and it is not maintained anymore and has been superseded by the package Horde_Pdf from pear.horde.org.

Can I just change the codebase to the new package? Or do I need to change the function calls?

I started a repository where I convert the old code to the new code at https://github.com/rubo77/File_PDF

The old PDF.php was renamed to Writer.php and the fonts are now in another folder. and the class File_PDF was renamed to class Horde_Pdf_Writer.

I replaced the code in my scripts:

and changed

    require_once('vendors/pear/File_PDF/PDF.php');
    $this->pdf = &File_PDF::factory();

to

    require_once('vendors/pear/Horde_Pdf_Writer/Writer.php');
    $this->pdf = new Horde_Pdf_Writer();

now I get the error

Uncaught Error: Class 'Horde_String' not found in /var/www/app/vendors/pear/Horde_Pdf_Writer/Writer.php

Answer 1

A better solution would be to use a more actively maintained PDF generation library like TCPDF, which doesn't need much changes either, e.g. from file_PDF to TCPDF just:

• replace newLine() with Ln()
• replace getOutput() with Output()
• SetFont('Arial', ... doesn't work, so just use SetFont('', ...

---

If you really need this old Library you need to also download those packages:

• Horde_Exception
• Horde_Util
• Horde_Translation

To let it run in a local folder, edit some files:

instead of calling File_PDF with

require_once('vendors/pear/File_PDF/PDF.php');
$this->pdf = &File_PDF::factory();

now call

require_once('vendors/pear/Horde/Pdf/Writer.php');
require_once('vendors/pear/Horde/Pdf/Exception.php');
require_once('vendors/pear/Horde/String.php');
$this->pdf = new Horde_Pdf_Writer();

in Writer.php the function _getFontFile() needs these extra lines:

$fontname = Horde_String::ucfirst(Horde_String::lower($fontkey));
        require_once('vendors/pear/Horde/Pdf/Font/'.$fontname.'.php');
$fontClass = 'Horde_Pdf_Font_' . $fontname;

in Exception.php you need to call

require_once('vendors/pear/Horde/Exception/Wrapped.php');

in Wrapped.php you need

require_once('vendors/pear/Horde/Exception.php');