Looking for info on an Automated PDF Catalog

It seems there are no current contributions for this.

I searched throughly through the forum, and it looks like several attempts were made to convert the old osC PDF contribution that created a PFD catalog at the push of a button. However, it looks like all attempts were unsuccessful.

Before I start working on something for this from scratch, I thought I'd check to see if anyone has this working, especially since, if my memory serves me correctly, the original author of this contribution was a founding member of this site (Birdbrain?)

No one has implemented anything like this?

I don't have a solution for you but keep in mind that generating PDF is resource intensive to do on the fly depending to the size of the shop catalog being created ...

You might want to consider once generated to have a static file used that gets updated via the admin on a regular basis or via a cron job to not overload the server each time that it is requested ...

W&W -

My old printable catalog was not a .pdf. It just rearranged the product details into "pages" that were configurable and easy to print using the browser's print button. You could do something similar with CSS and the All Products Listing (maybe).

Kim:

W&W -

My old printable catalog was not a .pdf. It just rearranged the product details into "pages" that were configurable and easy to print using the browser's print button. You could do something similar with CSS and the All Products Listing (maybe).

Thanks Kim, I thought I remembered that it was you that created the printable catalog.

Yeah, I agree Ajeh, and it doesn't necessarily have to be 'on the fly'. I guess I could put a button in the admin that generates the PDF when clicked, or something.

Actually the absolute minimum requirement right now is a PDF catalog of all of the products. If I have a HTML page, like the allprods page that I want to try to render, there are a few online resources that will convert an html page to pdf.

Unfortuantly, I have to remove the columns, navbar, etc. Looks like since the allprods is using the 'main_page', I'd have to maybe make a copy of that with my custom chagnes for just this one page. Basically I guess I need adifferent layout for this 'products_catalog' page.

Anyways, any other suggestions you guys could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Chris -

besides removing the navBar etc, what do you want the printable page to do? What information do you want on it?

Ok, I'm getting there.

I created a page in the cart, very similar to the all prods page, except that I removed the navbar and the right column, using the instructions in the main page template file. This way I can make a cleaner PDF document.

Then I installed a free program on my PC called 'CutePDF' which allows me to create a PDF document from any webpage on the fly. It's not web based, so I have to create the PDF file on my PC, then upload it to the cart, and It's certainly not as elegant as I hoped, but this is a functional solution for me, for now. Thanks for your help.