[FIXED] Cakephp 3 - CakePDF and Search Plugin - render filtered data to PDF?

Issue

I'm using the FriendsOfCake CakePDF Plugin with wkhtmltopdf to render my views as PDF. I also use their Search plugin to filter view data with a form.

For now, when I print the data in the view it always renders all view data into the PDF and not only the filtered data that is displayed on screen.

Is there any way to do this? I can't find anything that mentions such a case in the Plugin Docs. It seems like the PDF plugin always reloads the page in its default state or rather loads the default query from the index function instead of the filtered data. Since this is my first CakePDF project I don't really get what I have to do to make it render the filtered data instead. Can anybody help with that?

Here is what my main files look like so far:

class PaintingsController extends AppController
{
    public function index()
   {
    $query = $this->Paintings
        ->find('search', 
            $this->Paintings->filterParams($this->request->query))
        ->contain(['Artists', 
                    'Tickets' => function ($q) {
                            return $q->where(['Tickets.active' => false]);
                     }
                ]);

    $this->viewBuilder()->options([
        'pdfConfig' => [
            'orientation' => 'portrait',
            'filename' => 'paintings.pdf'
        ]
    ]);

    $this->set('paintings', $this->paginate($query));
    $this->set('_serialize', ['paintings']);
    }
}

class PaintingsTable extends Table
{
    public function searchConfiguration()
    {
    $search = new Manager($this);

    $search->like('title', [
                'before' => true,
                'after' => true,
                'field' => $this->aliasField('title'),
                'filterEmpty' => true
        ])->value('property', [
            'field' => $this->aliasField('property'),
            'filterEmpty' => true
        ])->like('artist_name', [
            'before' => false,
            'after' => true,
            'field' => $this->Artists->target()->aliasField('surname'),
            'filterEmpty' => true
        ])->value('technique', [
            'field' => $this->aliasField('technique'),
            'filterEmpty' => true
        ]);

      return $search;

    }
}

In Template\Paintings\index.ctp

... data in tables ...

<?= $this->Html->link('Save as PDF',[
                         'action' => 'index',
                         '_ext' => 'pdf'],[
                               'class' => 'create-pdf-link', 
                               'target' => 'blank'
                     ]) ?>

Then everything gets rendered in Templates\Paintings\pdf\index.ctp without the applied filtering.

Solution

Your PDF link won't contain any filter paramters, so there is no reload or anything, it just won't do any filtering.

The current query is not being incorportated automatically when generating links/URLs, you have to explicitly pass it to the URL array on your own, like

$this->Html->link(
    'Save as PDF',
    [
        'action' => 'index',
        '_ext' => 'pdf'
    ] + $this->request->query, // there it goes
    [
        'class' => 'create-pdf-link',
        'target' => 'blank'
    ]
);

See also Cookbook > Routing > Generating URLs

Answered By - ndm