Get a PDF/PNG as output from a UIWebView or UIView

Question

Is there any way to get the content of a UIWebView and convert it to a PDF or PNG file? I\'d like to get similar output to that available on the Mac by selectin

Answer 1

@mjdth, try fileURLWithPath:isDirectory: instead. URLWithString wasn't working for me either.

@implementation UIView(PDFWritingAdditions)

- (void)renderInPDFFile:(NSString*)path
{
    CGRect mediaBox = self.bounds;
    CGContextRef ctx = CGPDFContextCreateWithURL((CFURLRef)[NSURL fileURLWithPath:path isDirectory:NO], &mediaBox, NULL);

    CGPDFContextBeginPage(ctx, NULL);
    CGContextScaleCTM(ctx, 1, -1);
    CGContextTranslateCTM(ctx, 0, -mediaBox.size.height);
    [self.layer renderInContext:ctx];
    CGPDFContextEndPage(ctx);
    CFRelease(ctx);
}

@end

Answer 2

The code below will convert the (full) content of a UIWebView to an UIImage.

After rendering the UIImage I write it to disk as PNG to see the result.
Of course you could do with the UIImage whatever you like.

UIImage *image = nil;
CGRect oldFrame = webView.frame;

// Resize the UIWebView, contentSize could be > visible size
[webView sizeToFit];
CGSize fullSize = webView.scrollView.contentSize;

// Render the layer content onto the image  
UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(fullSize);
CGContextRef resizedContext = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
[webView.layer renderInContext:resizedContext];
image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();

// Revert the UIWebView back to its old size
webView.frame = oldFrame;

// Write the UIImage to disk as PNG so that we can see the result
NSString *path= [NSHomeDirectory() stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"Documents/Test.png"];
[UIImagePNGRepresentation(image) writeToFile:path atomically:YES];

Note: make sure the UIWebView is fully loaded (UIWebViewDelegate or loading property).

Answer 3

Creating a image from a web view is simple:

UIImage* image = nil;

UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(offscreenWebView_.frame.size);
{
    [offscreenWebView_.layer renderInContext: UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()];
    image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
}
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();

Once you have the image you can save it as a PNG.

Creating PDFs is also possible in a very similar way, but only on a yet unreleased iPhone OS version.

Answer 4

You can use the following category on UIView to create a PDF file:

#import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>

@implementation UIView(PDFWritingAdditions)

- (void)renderInPDFFile:(NSString*)path
{
    CGRect mediaBox = self.bounds;
    CGContextRef ctx = CGPDFContextCreateWithURL((CFURLRef)[NSURL fileURLWithPath:path], &mediaBox, NULL);

    CGPDFContextBeginPage(ctx, NULL);
    CGContextScaleCTM(ctx, 1, -1);
    CGContextTranslateCTM(ctx, 0, -mediaBox.size.height);
    [self.layer renderInContext:ctx];
    CGPDFContextEndPage(ctx);
    CFRelease(ctx);
}

@end

Bad news: UIWebView does not create nice shapes and text in the PDF, but renders itself as an image into the PDF.