Written by Admin on 2025-05-06

How to Download PDFs with WordPress, jQuery, and Dompdf

Are you looking for a way to create PDFs of your WordPress content and allow users to download them? With a little help from jQuery and Dompdf, you can easily do just that.

What is Dompdf?

Dompdf is an open-source PHP library that allows you to convert HTML into PDFs. It’s a popular choice for generating PDFs on the fly because it’s simple to use and highly customizable.

Setting Up Dompdf

To get started, you’ll need to download Dompdf and place it in your WordPress site’s plugins folder. Once you’ve done that, you can start configuring Dompdf to work with your site.

There are a few different ways to do this, but one popular method is to create a custom plugin that initializes Dompdf and registers a new shortcode for it.

```php

requireonce( plugindir_path( FILE ) . '/dompdf/autoload.inc.php' );

use Dompdf\Dompdf;

addshortcode( 'pdf-download', 'custompdf_download' );

function custompdfdownload( $atts ) { $args = shortcode_atts( array( 'id' => null, 'title' => 'Download PDF', ), $atts );

// If no ID is specified, use the current post ID.
if ( $args['id'] === null ) {
    $args['id'] = get_the_ID();
}

// Get the post content as HTML.
$post = get_post( $args['id'] );
$content = apply_filters( 'the_content', $post->post_content );

// Initialize Dompdf.
$dompdf = new Dompdf();
$dompdf->loadHtml( $content );
$dompdf->setPaper( 'A4', 'portrait' );
$dompdf->render();

// Output the PDF for download.
$filename = sanitize_title( $args['title'] ) . '.pdf';
$dompdf->stream( $filename );

} ```

In this example, we’ve created a custom plugin that loads the Dompdf library and registers a shortcode called [pdf-download]. When this shortcode is used, it generates a PDF of the specified post ID (or the current post if no ID is specified) and outputs it for download with a filename based on the shortcode title attribute.

Adding jQuery to the Mix

Now that you have a way to generate PDFs on the fly, you’ll need to add a way for users to trigger the download. One simple way to do this is with jQuery.

Here’s an example of how you could add a download button to your WordPress site that triggers the PDF download when clicked:

html <button class="pdf-download">Download PDF</button>

```javascript jQuery( '.pdf-download' ).on( 'click', function() { var postID = jQuery( this ).data( 'post-id' ); var title = jQuery( document ).find( 'title' ).text(); var url = wp.ajax.settings.url + '?action=custompdfdownload&id=' + postID + '&title=' + encodeURIComponent( title );

jQuery.get( url, function() {
    var blob = new Blob( [ data ], { type: 'application/pdf' } );
    var link = document.createElement( 'a' );
    link.href = window.URL.createObjectURL( blob );
    link.download = title + '.pdf';
    document.body.appendChild( link );
    link.click();
});

}); ```

In this example, we’re using a button with a class of .pdf-download to trigger the PDF download. When clicked, we use jQuery to get the post ID and title, build a URL for the custom PDF download shortcode, and use AJAX to get the PDF data. Once we have the data, we create a blob object and a link element with a download attribute for the PDF filename, append the link to the body, and trigger a click event on the link to start the download.

Conclusion

With a little bit of PHP, jQuery, and Dompdf, you can create a WordPress plugin that generates PDFs on the fly and allows users to download them with the click of a button. Whether you’re looking to create PDF versions of your blog posts, product pages, or other content, this method is a great way to provide a convenient download option for your users.