How do I turn a ColdFusion page into a PDF download?

Question

I would like to turn the HTML generated by my CFM page into a PDF, and have the user prompted with the standard \"Save As\" prompt when navigating to my page.

Answer 1

The approach is the sanctioned way to get it done, however it does not offer everything possible in the way of manipulating existing PDF documents. I had a project where I needed to generate coupons based using a pre-designed, print-resolution PDF template. would have let me approximate the output, but only with bitmap images embedded in HTML. True, I could fake print-resolution by making a large image and scaling it in HTML, but the original was a nice, clean, vector-image file and I wanted to use that instead.

I ended up using a copy of to get the job done. (Developer's Site, CF Tag Store) It's a CF wrapper around a Java PDF library that lets you manipulate existing PDF documents, including filling out PDF forms, setting permissions, merging files, drawing vector graphics, tables, and text, use custom fonts, etc, etc. If you are willing to work with it, you can get some pretty spectacular results.

The one drawback is that it appears the developer has left this product out to pasture for a long time. The developer site is still copyright 2003 and doesn't mention anything past ColdFusion MX 6.1. I ended up having to break some of the encrypted templates in order to fix a couple of bugs and make it work as I needed it to. Nontheless, it is a powerful tool.