Laravel PDF generation with Graph and send it with Email - laravel

Question

I tried to find it on StackOverflow and also tried to google it, but could not find any relevant answer.
I want to send monthly reports to the user of Laravel application with a PDF that contain a graph/chart.
This is what that is already done
Created a route, lets say
Route::get('/print/', 'PrintController#report');
In printController created a report function that is getting all the necessary data from the DB and returning a view with user data
return view::make('monthly_report', $user_data);
In monthly_report view, get all the user data, show the view and create a chart with the data. The chart is created with Charts.js. it is in a canvas.
Send the generated chart as image to the server with Ajax. For example
var canvas = document.getElementById("myChart"), // Get your canvas
imgdata = canvas.toDataURL();
file_name = "<?php echo $chart_file_name; ?>"; //created with userId and date
//send it to server
$.ajax({
method: "POST",
url: "save",
data: {
data: imgdata,
file_name: file_name,
_token: token,
}
});
Created a save route
Route::post('print/save', 'PrintController#saveChart');
In print controller, saveChart function, save the chart
$data = base64_decode($data);
//save chart on server
file_put_contents("Charts/".$fileName, $data);
Then create a PDF report by using another view monthly_report2, that is also in saveChart function. The view monthly_report2 does not use any JavaScript and use the chart image that was generated by monthly_report, in number 6.
$pdf = \PDF::loadView('monthly_report2', $cll_data);
file_put_contents("reports/".$pdf_name, $pdf->output());
It save the generated PDF on server. So far so good.
To send these PDF reports to the users by e-mail, I will created a schedule/crone job that will be run on a specific date, monthly and will send the e-mails with PDF reports as attachments.
I skip some details for clarity, please ask, if you need more information.
Thank you for reading so far, now I have two questions
The way I am doing is good or it can be improve?
We want all this process automatically (generating reports and sending by email). To generate the PDF's, monthly_report view must be loaded? so that it generate the Chart and send it to the server. Can we schedule it also, so that it generate the pdf reports automatically?, If no, is there any other way to do it?

Answer 1

Kind of a big question, but I'll try to answer
I think it's good. I'm not a big fan of using JavaScript to create charts, but that's me. You obviously know what you're doing and PDF generation is in my experience a "If it works, please don't break it" functionality.
I think this might be more difficult. Since you're using JavaScript to create charts, you need some kind of engine (NodeJS comes to mind) to parse the JavaScript and actually create your charts without opening a browser and doing it manually. (This is why I don't like using JavaScript to create charts). You could take a look at tutorials like this one to get an idea of how to render your charts serverside.
After that, you can take a look at the Laravel task scheduler (provided you're on Laravel 5, a community package exists for Laravel 4). You can schedule existing and custom-made commands to be executed. In pseudo-code, a PDF generation command could look like this:
public function createAndSendCharts() {
// 1. Get necessary user data
// 2. Create your charts
// 3. Save your charts
// 4. Create email with charts
// 5. Send your email
}
You could then add that function to your Task Scheduler
$schedule->command('send:charts')
->monthly();
Hope this was of some help. All in all, you're doing fine, but the choice for ChartJS has some consequences if you want to automate the whole process. Nothing really special, tons of tutorials exist for this situation :)