How to Convert UIView to PDF within iOS?
Note that the following method creates just a bitmap of the view; it does not create actual typography.
(void)createPDFfromUIView:(UIView*)aView saveToDocumentsWithFileName:(NSString*)aFilename
{
// Creates a mutable data object for updating with binary data, like a byte array
NSMutableData *pdfData = [NSMutableData data];
// Points the pdf converter to the mutable data object and to the UIView to be converted
UIGraphicsBeginPDFContextToData(pdfData, aView.bounds, nil);
UIGraphicsBeginPDFPage();
CGContextRef pdfContext = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
// draws rect to the view and thus this is captured by UIGraphicsBeginPDFContextToData
[aView.layer renderInContext:pdfContext];
// remove PDF rendering context
UIGraphicsEndPDFContext();
// Retrieves the document directories from the iOS device
NSArray* documentDirectories = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask,YES);
NSString* documentDirectory = [documentDirectories objectAtIndex:0];
NSString* documentDirectoryFilename = [documentDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:aFilename];
// instructs the mutable data object to write its context to a file on disk
[pdfData writeToFile:documentDirectoryFilename atomically:YES];
NSLog(@"documentDirectoryFileName: %@",documentDirectoryFilename);
}
Also make sure you import: QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h
If someone is interested, here's Swift 2.1 code:
func createPdfFromView(aView: UIView, saveToDocumentsWithFileName fileName: String)
{
let pdfData = NSMutableData()
UIGraphicsBeginPDFContextToData(pdfData, aView.bounds, nil)
UIGraphicsBeginPDFPage()
guard let pdfContext = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext() else { return }
aView.layer.renderInContext(pdfContext)
UIGraphicsEndPDFContext()
if let documentDirectories = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(.DocumentDirectory, .UserDomainMask, true).first {
let documentsFileName = documentDirectories + "/" + fileName
debugPrint(documentsFileName)
pdfData.writeToFile(documentsFileName, atomically: true)
}
}
Additionally, if anyone is interested, here is the Swift 3 code:
func createPdfFromView(aView: UIView, saveToDocumentsWithFileName fileName: String)
{
let pdfData = NSMutableData()
UIGraphicsBeginPDFContextToData(pdfData, aView.bounds, nil)
UIGraphicsBeginPDFPage()
guard let pdfContext = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext() else { return }
aView.layer.render(in: pdfContext)
UIGraphicsEndPDFContext()
if let documentDirectories = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(.documentDirectory, .userDomainMask, true).first {
let documentsFileName = documentDirectories + "/" + fileName
debugPrint(documentsFileName)
pdfData.write(toFile: documentsFileName, atomically: true)
}
}