To webdevs again

[soulcheck]

Is there anything similar to apache fop for php/ruby?

I mean something which will take xml + xsl and produce pdf?

The problem is that I would really like using this technique and couldn't find any info on php/ruby way to do it. I wouldn't like to use j2ee that much as there's not many hosts offering servlet containers, and hence having my project written in java would require me to rent a dedicated server or buy my own one and collocate it somewhere. Don't want to do that, at least at the beginning.

Help much appreciated.

[Spandex]

If you can parse it yourself, fpdf is a free PHP lib that'll generate PDFs.

Or if you're generating the xml/xsl yourself you could just generate the PDF instead.

[cynthia]

php has loads of pdf support. check oot the manual regarding this...
http://php.net/manual/en/book.pdf.php
reckon it wont be too hard to do it.

[soulcheck]

@spandex Yeah, that's exactly what fop and similar libs allow you to avoid.

The point is I want to have an easy way to choose the presentation method. And would like to do it declaratively not programmaticaly. Ideally I would provide an xml with content and xsl with styling, use some xsl-fo2html processor to get html, and fop to get pdf.

But I guess if google didn't find anything, then I'm off with java :/

Must ask some popular hosts (dreamhost, etc) if they provide environment for shell programs written in java. Then maybe I could launch console java app witch would do the job from php.

[soulcheck]

I have to evaluate what will take more time/money too.