phppdf

Modern PHP 8.4 library for PDF generation. Pure PHP, no external runtime dependencies beyond the standard mbstring, openssl, and zlib extensions.

Status: stable (1.0). The public API follows semantic versioning; breaking changes are reserved for the next major version. See CHANGELOG.md.

What works today

A quick tour - each feature has a full guide in the wiki.

Create

• 📄 Documents - 19 standard sizes (ISO A0-A7, B4 / B5, C-series envelopes, Letter / Legal / Tabloid / Executive / Half-Letter) plus custom sizes, portrait or landscape, multi-page, metadata, AES-256 password protection, viewer hints.
• 📐 Coordinates - millimetres by default (origin top-left), or PDF points via Unit::PT.
• ✏️ Graphics - lines, rectangles, circles, paths, fill / stroke, dashes, caps / joins, transforms.
• 🔤 Text - the 12 standard fonts, multi-line, configurable leading, full Western Latin, exact width measurement.
• 🔡 Custom fonts - register TrueType / OpenType families with full Unicode (Latin / Greek / Cyrillic / CJK), selectable text, automatic glyph subsetting.
• 📦 Cells - text boxes with borders, fill, padding, alignment (left / center / right / justify), word-wrap, three width-fit modes.
• 🖼️ Images - JPEG and PNG (all color types, transparency), embedded once and placed anywhere.
• 🎨 SVG - fully vector: shapes, paths, gradients, patterns, clipping, masks, CSS styling, selectable <text> / <textPath>, pure-PHP <filter>.
• 🔢 Barcodes & QR - 1D (EAN-13 / 8, Code 128 / 39 / 93, UPC-A, ITF) and 2D (QR, Aztec, DataMatrix, PDF417), pure-PHP and vector.
• 📝 Markdown - a CommonMark core subset, flowing with automatic page breaks or inside an auto-sized cell, styleable via MarkdownStyle.
• 📊 Tables - data grids via Page::table(): fixed or fill columns, repeated headers, zebra striping, borders, per-cell styling, column spanning, grouped headers.
• 🧱 Multi-column layout - flow cell() and markdown() across equal-width columns with $page->columns(...).
• 🔖 Bookmarks & hyperlinks - a nested table-of-contents sidebar and clickable URL / page areas.
• 🧾 Interactive forms - text fields, checkboxes, radios, dropdowns, listboxes, buttons, with per-field styling, JavaScript actions, and field linking.
• ✍️ Digital signatures - real PKCS#7 / CMS via Document::sign(), RFC 3161 timestamps, multiple signers, PAdES B-B / B-T, and LTV building blocks.

Right-to-left & accessibility

• 🔁 Right-to-left text - Unicode bidi reordering (UAX #9) plus Arabic cursive shaping (contextual forms + lam-alef ligatures) on cells, tables, and Markdown; per-document, per-cell, or per-block direction.
• 🗄️ PDF/A archival - PDF/A-1 (PDF 1.4-based, levels 1b / 1a, transparency rejected), PDF/A-2, PDF/A-3 (levels b / u / a), and PDF 2.0-based PDF/A-4 (+ A-4f) with one enablePdfA() call, veraPDF-validated; A-3 / A-4f embed Factur-X / ZUGFeRD e-invoices.
• ♿ Tagged PDF & PDF/UA-1 - opt-in tagging via enableTagging(); enablePdfUA() produces veraPDF-validated PDF/UA-1 with artifacts, figure alt text, table header scopes, and tagged hyperlinks.

Read & modify existing PDFs

• 📖 Reading - PdfReader parses PDFs including encrypted ones (RC4 40/128-bit, AES-128, AES-256); pass an optional password or omit it for permissions-only encryption. Classic xref tables, cross-reference streams, incremental revisions, object streams, and common filters.
• 🧩 Template import (FPDI-style) - Document::importPdf() + Page::template() stamp any source page as a background or overlay: letterheads, watermarks, scanned-form fills. Encrypted source PDFs are supported (optional password).
• 🔧 Modifying - PdfEditor::open() saves changes as appended revisions, leaving the original bytes (and any signatures) intact: edit metadata, add pages, delete and reorder pages (bookmarks and links pointing at a removed page are cleaned up automatically), sign, timestamp, and enable LTV. Editing encrypted PDFs is supported - pass an optional password; signing an encrypted PDF is not yet supported.
• 🖋️ Filling AcroForm fields - inspect and setField() text / checkbox / radio / combobox / listbox values; each filled field gets a generated appearance. Fields that use a font embedded in the document (not only the standard 14) are supported too. flattenFields() freezes filled forms into static page content (all fields or a named subset; signature and button fields are kept). Works on encrypted PDFs.

Installation

composer require dragonofmercy/phppdf

Quick start

use DragonOfMercy\PhpPdf\Document;

$pdf = new Document();
$pdf->addPage();
$pdf->save('out.pdf');

$pdf->output() returns the PDF bytes as a string instead of writing to disk.

Documentation

Full usage documentation lives in the wiki:

• Getting Started, Examples
• Text and Fonts, Cells, Tables, Graphics, Images
• Barcodes and QR Codes, SVG Support
• Markdown, Bookmarks and Hyperlinks, Viewer Preferences, Metadata and Encryption
• Interactive Forms, Digital Signatures, PDF/A Conformance
• Internals and contributing: Architecture, Contributing

Development

The library source lives under build/. To get started:

git clone https://github.com/dragonofmercy/php-pdf.git
cd php-pdf/build
composer install
composer check   # PHPStan (level max) + PHPUnit

See the Contributing wiki page for coding conventions, golden fixture workflow, and how to add new features.

License

MIT - see LICENSE.

Support

If this project helps to increase your productivity, you can give me a cup of coffee :)