How to fetch magento admin page output?

Question

I am trying to get output of a page in admin from a helper file which I need for a cron to convert it into pdf and email:

$html = file_get_contents('http://dltr.org/index.php/admin/dltrpdf_sales_shipment/index/shipment_id/65')

But, I get login page html, as it's a secure admin page. I also tried this PHPCurl but it didn't work. I still got login page html.

Is there any internal function available in Magento that can emulate admin page load and return correct html output (source code)?

FYI, I am using Magento ver. 1.14.2.4.

Answer 1

In order to get any page in admin you need to have key parameter in the url. You receive the key at the login.

You can write a custom module with output that you need from that admin page.

Answer 2

Technically, using file_get_contents() connecting from a different computer and is not under the same session as your browser. Therefore you are failing authentication.

Instead, look into exporting the block as HTML:

$block = $this->getLayout()->createBlock(
    'some/block', 
    'block_name', 
    array()
);

$html = $block->toHtml();

The code above is written for a controller, so you would need a little extra work to get the Layout object from a helper.