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

Solution 1:

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.

Solution 2:

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.