In a standard Joomla 1.5 installation, you can generate a PDF version of a content item by clicking on the pdf icon appearing in the top right corner of the content item page.

However, if you have installed some plugins such as the Include Content Item or the googleAds plugins, you will find that the plugin do not get processed during the generation of the PDF documents. As as result, you will see the plugin tags such as {googleAds} or {include_content_item}, appearing in the PDF documents! This is, of course, undesirable.

This article shows you how to have the plugins processed during the generation of the PDF documents for content items.

Note: the steps below are for Joomla 1.5.x. If you're using Joomla 1.0.x, please refer to How to have DirectPHP plugin process RSS feed (for Joomla 1.0.x)?.

Explanation

In the original Joomla installation, there is no trigger during the generation of PDF documents. When there is no trigger, none of the plugin gets called. In order for the plugins to be processed, we need to add a trigger.

Solutions

All you need is to add 2 lines to have plugins processed during the generation of PDF documents!

1. Go to the folder <Joomla root folder>/components/com_content/views/article, you will see a file called view.pdf.php.
2. Open this file view.pdf.php in your favorite editor.
3. Go to around line 42, and add the 2 lines highlighted in yellow as shown below:

// Initialize some variables
$article	= & $this->get( 'Article' );
$params 	= & $article->parameters;

// process the new plugins
JPluginHelper::importPlugin('content', 'image');
$dispatcher->trigger('onPrepareContent', array (& $article, & $params, 0));

JPluginHelper::importPlugin('content');
$results = $dispatcher->trigger('onPrepareContent', array (& $article, & $params, 0));

$document = &JFactory::getDocument();

// set document information
$document->setTitle($article->title);
$document->setName($article->alias);
$document->setDescription($article->metadesc);
$document->setMetaData('keywords', $article->metakey);

4. Save and close this file.

That's it! Now try generating the PDF documents. You should find all the plugin tags disappear in the PDF documents as they get processed by the respective plugins.

User reviews   Average user ratings:    5.0   (from 1 user)

1. Georg Bähr
   July 28, 2008 4:13am
   Perfect! but a question too
   

   Thanks, this works just perfect.
   But could you please make an example how to mod the Joomla 1.5 search so it does parse any "content plugin" too?
   I have made a little plugin which displays user specific content. Its more a "hack" than good code but it works. The only problem is that the search removes the "{plugin arg}{/plugin}" and just dispalys ALL content. It works with you mod for the pdf view. But i have no idea how to deal with the search.
   Thanks!!

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