How to Convert UIView to PDF within iOS?

Solution 1:

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

Solution 2:

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)
    }
}

Solution 3:

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)
        }
    }