README

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.

• Documents - standard formats (A4 / Letter / Legal and more) and custom sizes, portrait or landscape, multi-page, metadata, AES-256 password protection, and viewer hints.
• Coordinates - millimetres by default (origin top-left, Y pointing down), or PDF points via Unit::PT.
• Graphics - lines, rectangles, circles, paths, fill / stroke, dashes, line caps / joins, and transforms.
• Text - the 12 standard PDF fonts, multi-line text, configurable leading, and full Western Latin (accents and typographic characters).
• Custom TrueType / OpenType fonts - register your own families and use them like the built-ins: full Unicode reach (Latin / Greek / Cyrillic / CJK), selectable text, and automatic glyph subsetting for small files.
• Cells - text boxes with borders, fill, padding, alignment (left / center / right / justify), automatic word-wrap, and three width-fit modes.
• Text measurement - $page->stringWidth(...) returns the exact width of a string in the current font.
• Images - JPEG and PNG (all color types, with transparency), auto-detected, embedded once and placed as many times as you like.
• SVG vector images - inline or from a file, fully vector: shapes, paths, gradients, patterns, clipping, masks, CSS styling, embedded rasters, real selectable <text> / <textPath>, and a pure-PHP <filter> raster.
• Barcodes & QR codes - 1D (EAN-13 / 8, Code 128 / 39 / 93, UPC-A, ITF) and 2D (QR, Aztec, DataMatrix, PDF417), all pure-PHP and vector, with optional human-readable text and vertical 1D rendering.
• Bookmarks & hyperlinks - a nested table-of-contents sidebar and clickable areas that open a URL or jump to another page.
• Interactive forms - fillable text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdowns, listboxes, and push buttons, with per-field styling, JavaScript actions (calculation / formatting / validation), and automatic field linking.
• Digital signatures - sign with a real PKCS#7 / CMS signature via Document::sign() and a PKCS#12 credential, with RFC 3161 timestamps, multiple signers, the strict PAdES profiles (B-B / B-T), and long-term-validation (LTV) building blocks.
• Markdown - render a CommonMark core subset, either flowing with automatic page breaks (Page::markdown()) or inside an auto-sized cell; styleable via MarkdownStyle.
• Tables - data grids via Page::table(): fixed or fill columns, headers repeated across pages, zebra striping, borders, a per-cell style callback, text-or-image cells, column spanning (colSpan), and grouped headers.
• Right-to-left text - Unicode bidirectional reordering (UAX #9) for Hebrew, Arabic, and other RTL scripts on cells, tables, and Markdown. Set a document base direction with setBaseDirection(), override per cell with direction:, per table cell with Cell::direction(), or per Markdown block with the direction: argument on Page::markdown() / cell(markdown: true); Direction::AUTO detects the base from the text. An RTL base right-aligns by default. No page-coordinate flip - layout, images, and tables are unaffected. Arabic cursive shaping is included: letters are joined using the correct contextual presentation forms (isolated / initial / medial / final) and the four mandatory lam-alef ligatures are formed automatically; the font's cmap must contain the Arabic presentation forms (e.g. GNU FreeSerif, DejaVu Sans, Tahoma - modern GSUB-only fonts that omit the legacy presentation-form block are not supported). Markdown RTL: bidi reordering and Arabic shaping apply to each Markdown block, RTL blocks are right-aligned, and list markers / blockquote bars are mirrored to the right side; inline code and fenced code blocks stay LTR.
• Multi-column layout - flow cell() and markdown() across equal-width columns with $page->columns(...), filling each column before the next and continuing onto new pages.
• PDF/A archival - emit PDF/A-2 and PDF/A-3 (levels b, u, and a) with one enablePdfA() call, validated against veraPDF; A-3 embeds associated files such as a Factur-X / ZUGFeRD e-invoice. Level A (PdfALevel::A2A / A3A) auto-enables tagging and requires the catalog language, e.g. enablePdfA(PdfALevel::A2A, 'en-US'). Combining enablePdfA(PdfALevel::A2A, 'en-US') with enablePdfUA('en-US') produces a single file that is both PDF/A-2a and PDF/UA-1.
• Tagged PDF & PDF/UA-1 accessibility - opt-in structure tagging via enableTagging(): cells, images, tables, and Markdown are tagged automatically into a logical structure tree (StructTreeRoot, MarkInfo, ParentTree, marked content), with an optional document language. enablePdfUA() goes further and produces output that validates as PDF/UA-1 (isCompliant under veraPDF): decoration is marked as /Artifact, figures carry alternate text (image(alt: ...)), table headers get a scope, DisplayDocTitle and an XMP pdfuaid are emitted, and a fail-fast guard enforces embedded fonts, a title, and figure alt text. Text hyperlinks made with cell(link: ...) are tagged as accessible <Link> elements (with /OBJR, /StructParent, and a description). Markdown inline links are also tagged automatically as <Link> elements when tagging is on, so markdown() with links is PDF/UA-1 conformant. Image hyperlinks are tagged on both surfaces: Page::image(link: ..., linkAlt: ...) and Markdown block image links [![alt](img)](url) both emit a <Link> wrapping the <Figure>, keeping documents with image links PDF/UA-1 conformant.

Not yet implemented

• Bidi explicit embedding/override/isolate controls, and per-column-header direction in tables.

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 :)