Generating Thumbnails from PDF's

[eluser]Flemming[/eluser]
for what it's worth, a year on, here's what I've done today! I've put it into a model and I call it from a simple controller - but you can use it directly in the controller

Code:

function createPdfJpg($pdf)
{
     $root = $this->config->item('document_root'); // set in config/config.php, eg. /var/www/mysite
     $destination = "/assets/pdfThumbs/";
     $file = basename($pdf); // get the file name including extension, eg. myPdf.pdf
     $filename = substr($file, 0, strrpos($file, '.')); // get the file name minus the extension
     exec("/usr/bin/convert " . escapeshellarg($root.$pdf.'[0]') . " -colorspace RGB -geometry 172x " . escapeshellarg($root.$destination.$filename.".jpg"));    // -geometry 172x creates the jpg at 172px wide (and appropriate height)    
}

It requires ImageMagick and Ghostscript. Hope this helps someone!