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dskripchenko/php-pdf

Replaces mpdf + FPDI with a single MIT package — no GPL friction, and faster. Pure-PHP toolkit to generate, read, and merge PDFs: a GPL-free mpdf alternative for HTML→PDF and a free FPDI alternative for import/stamp — including xref-stream and encrypted sources. Migration is mechanical: from mpdf · from FPDI.

Tests Conformance Latest Version Total Downloads License: MIT PHP

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Contents

Why this library

Licensing. MIT is the most permissive PHP license — use the code anywhere, including closed-source products. Compare with the main PHP PDF stack:

Library License OEM / proprietary bundle
dskripchenko/php-pdf MIT ✅ no friction
mpdf/mpdf GPL-2.0-only ❌ requires GPL bundle or commercial license
tecnickcom/tcpdf LGPL-2.1+ ⚠️ static-linking nuances
dompdf/dompdf LGPL-2.1 ⚠️ same as tcpdf
setasign/fpdf re-licensable ✅ but extras are proprietary

Engineering.

  • Modern PHP 8.2+ — readonly classes, enums, named arguments, strict types. Clean, type-safe API surface.
  • Two-layer design — Pdf\Document for low-level emission, Build\* fluent builders for high-level documents, Document::fromHtml() for HTML/CSS input.
  • Strong typography — Knuth–Plass line breaking, TTF subsetting with kerning, GSUB ligatures, ToUnicode CMaps, variable font instances, Bidi (UAX#9), Arabic shaping, basic Indic shaping, vertical writing.
  • Widest barcode coverage — 12 linear + 4 2D formats including rare Pharmacode, MSI Plessey, ITF-14, EAN-2/5 add-ons.
  • Production cryptography — RC4-128, AES-128, AES-256 (V5 R5 and R6 per ISO 32000-2 / PDF 2.0).
  • PKCS#7 detached signing with placeholder /ByteRange auto-patching.
  • PDF/A-1a / 1b / 2u and PDF/X-1a / 3 / 4 conformance with embedded sRGB ICC profile and XMP metadata.
  • Tagged PDF / PDF/UA-ready structure tree with H1–H6, Table/TR/TD, L/LI, custom RoleMap, ParentTree number tree.
  • Streaming output to a stream resource for large documents.
  • XRef streams (PDF 1.5+) and Object Streams for compact output.

Installation

composer require dskripchenko/php-pdf

PHP 8.2 or later. Required extensions: mbstring, zlib, dom. Add openssl for AES encryption or PKCS#7 signing.

Quick start

HTML → PDF

use Dskripchenko\PhpPdf\Document;

$doc = Document::fromHtml(<<<'HTML'
<h1>Invoice #1234</h1>
<p>Customer: <strong>Acme Corp</strong></p>
<table>
  <thead><tr><th>Item</th><th>Price</th></tr></thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr><td>Widget</td><td>$10.00</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Gadget</td><td>$25.00</td></tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
HTML);

$doc->toFile('invoice.pdf');

Programmatic builder

use Dskripchenko\PhpPdf\Build\DocumentBuilder;
use Dskripchenko\PhpPdf\Build\RowBuilder;
use Dskripchenko\PhpPdf\Build\TableBuilder;

DocumentBuilder::new()
    ->heading(1, 'Quarterly report')
    ->paragraph('Q1 revenue exceeded the forecast by 12%.')
    ->table(function (TableBuilder $t) {
        $t->headerRow(fn (RowBuilder $r) => $r->cells(['Quarter', 'Revenue']));
        $t->row(fn (RowBuilder $r) => $r->cells(['Q1', '$330,000']));
        $t->row(fn (RowBuilder $r) => $r->cells(['Q2', '$310,000']));
    })
    ->toFile('report.pdf');

Low-level emission

use Dskripchenko\PhpPdf\Pdf\Document;
use Dskripchenko\PhpPdf\Pdf\StandardFont;
use Dskripchenko\PhpPdf\Style\PaperSize;

$doc  = Document::new(PaperSize::A4);
$page = $doc->addPage();
$page->showText('Hello, world!', 72, 720, StandardFont::TimesRoman, 12);
file_put_contents('hello.pdf', $doc->toBytes());

Feature highlights

Input

  • HTML5 subset parser via Document::fromHtml().
  • Block tags <p>, <h1>–<h6>, <ul>/<ol>/<li>, tables (with <thead>/<tbody>/<tfoot> and <caption>), <blockquote>, <hr>, <pre>, <dl>/<dt>/<dd>.
  • Inline tags <b>/<strong>, <i>/<em>, <u>, <s>/<del>, <sup>/<sub>, <br>, <a>, <span>, plus <code>, <kbd>, <samp>, <tt>, <var>, <mark>, <small>, <big>, <ins>, <cite>, <dfn>, <q>, <abbr>.
  • HTML5 semantic blocks (<header>, <footer>, <article>, <nav>, <section>, etc.) and legacy <center> / <font>.
  • Inline CSS: color, background, font properties, text-align, text-decoration, text-transform, margin/padding shorthand, borders, line-height, text-indent.

Layout and typography

  • Knuth–Plass box–glue–penalty line breaker with adaptive penalty.
  • Multi-column layout (ColumnSet) with column-first flow.
  • Tables with rowspan, colspan, border collapse, double borders, border radius, cell padding.
  • Headers, footers, watermarks (text and image), section breaks.
  • Footnotes with page-bottom positioning.

Fonts

  • 14 Adobe base-14 fonts (WinAnsi).
  • TTF embedding with on-demand subsetting (CFF and TrueType).
  • Kerning, basic GSUB ligatures, ToUnicode CMap.
  • Variable font instances (fvar, gvar, MVAR, HVAR, avar).
  • Bidi (UAX#9), Arabic shaping, basic Indic shaping.
  • Ready-made Liberation bundle (metric-compatible Arial / Times New Roman / Courier New): dskripchenko/php-pdf-fonts-liberation.

Barcodes

  • Linear: Code 128 (A/B/C auto, GS1-128), Code 39, Code 93, Code 11, Codabar, ITF/ITF-14, MSI Plessey, Pharmacode, EAN-13/EAN-8 with 2/5- digit add-ons, UPC-A, UPC-E.
  • 2D: QR V1–V10 (Numeric, Alphanumeric, Byte, Kanji, ECI, Structured Append, FNC1), Data Matrix ECC 200 (all sizes incl. 144×144, rectangular, 6 modes), PDF417 (Byte/Text/Numeric, Macro, GS1, ECI), Aztec Compact 1–4L + Full 5–32L (Structured Append, FLG/ECI).
  • QR convenience factories: vCard 3.0, WiFi Joinware, mailto.

Charts

  • BarChart, LineChart, PieChart, AreaChart, DonutChart, GroupedBarChart, StackedBarChart, MultiLineChart, ScatterChart.

Interactive

  • AcroForm widgets: text (single / multiline / password), checkbox, radio, combo, list, push / submit / reset buttons, signature.
  • Per-field JavaScript actions (keystroke, validate, calculate, format).
  • Markup annotations: Text, Highlight, Underline, StrikeOut, FreeText, Square, Circle, Line, Stamp, Ink, Polygon, PolyLine.

Security and conformance

  • Encryption: RC4-128, AES-128, AES-256 (V5 R5 + R6 / PDF 2.0).
  • PKCS#7 detached signing with timestamp, reason, location, signer name.
  • PDF/A-1a, PDF/A-1b, PDF/A-2u with embedded sRGB ICC.
  • PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, PDF/X-4 with /OutputIntent /S /GTS_PDFX.
  • Tagged PDF / PDF/UA-ready structure tree.

Reading and merging

  • Read existing PDFs (ReaderDocument) — classic and stream xref, object streams, corrupt-xref recovery, decryption (RC4 / AES-128 / AES-256).
  • Merge (PdfMerger) — append and reorder whole or selected pages from multiple files; page annotations and bookmarks carried over with internal links and named destinations remapped.
  • Stamp overlays (watermarks, letterheads) and FPDI-style page import into a freshly generated document via PageImporter::intoDocument().
  • See the reading & merging guide.

A complete usage walkthrough is in docs/en/USAGE.md.

Documentation

  • 📖 Usage guide — paragraphs, tables, charts, barcodes, forms, encryption, signing, PDF/A.
  • 🔗 Reading & merging PDFs — read existing files, append/reorder pages, stamp overlays, handle encrypted input.
  • ⚖️ Comparison vs mpdf / tcpdf / dompdf / FPDF — feature matrix, when to choose each.
  • 📊 Benchmarks — reproducible wall-time, memory, and output-size measurements.
  • ✅ Conformance — PDF/A validated with veraPDF, PDF/X checked with Ghostscript, renders diffed against goldens, and signatures verified with OpenSSL — on every push.
  • 🔀 Migrating from mpdf — compat facade (WriteHTML/Output keep working) + full mapping table.
  • 🔀 Migrating from FPDI — setSourceFile/importPage/useTemplate facade; reads xref-stream and encrypted sources without a commercial parser.

Examples

Runnable scripts in examples/, outputs committed to samples/ — every one is render-checked in CI:

Run Output Shows
php examples/01-html-to-pdf.php PDF HTML/CSS subset → PDF
php examples/02-builder.php PDF fluent builder, tables
php examples/03-barcodes.php PDF QR, Code 128, EAN-13, DataMatrix
php examples/04-charts.php PDF vector pie/bar/line charts
php examples/05-forms.php PDF fillable AcroForm fields
php examples/06-signature.php PDF PKCS#7 digital signature
php examples/07-pdfa.php PDF PDF/A-2u (veraPDF-clean); needs scripts/fetch-fonts.sh
php examples/08-merge.php PDF append + reorder existing PDFs
php examples/09-stamp.php PDF watermark/letterhead stamping

The torture set exercises the hard paths (Arabic, CJK, rectangular DataMatrix, …) — see VIEWER-MATRIX.

Performance

Median of 5 isolated subprocess runs (environment and versions in the report). Full methodology and reproducer in docs/en/BENCHMARKS.md.

Scenario dskripchenko/php-pdf mpdf tcpdf dompdf FPDF
HTML → PDF article (~5 pages) 12.0 ms 64.1 ms 37.4 ms 51.7 ms n/a
100-page invoice (50 rows/page) 576 ms 2640 ms 1479 ms 9586 ms 27.3 ms
Image grid (20 pages × 4 JPEGs) 6.7 ms 36.3 ms 14.5 ms 32.8 ms 1.0 ms
Hello world (single page, one paragraph) 4.3 ms 28.4 ms 12.9 ms 11.5 ms 0.9 ms

FPDF wins on the simplest scenarios (no HTML, no wrapping, no table flow), but it cannot generate HTML→PDF and lacks UTF-8, charts, barcodes, forms, encryption, signing.

Requirements

  • PHP 8.2 or later.
  • Required: ext-mbstring, ext-zlib, ext-dom.
  • Optional: ext-openssl (AES encryption and PKCS#7 signing).
  • No external binaries — pure PHP.

Testing

composer install
vendor/bin/phpunit

2,000+ tests, ~119k assertions, all passing on PHP 8.2 / 8.3 / 8.4 (see the tests workflow).

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Copyright © 2026 Denis Skripchenko.

About

Pure-PHP, MIT-licensed PDF toolkit: generate, read & merge PDFs — HTML/CSS input, barcodes, charts, TTF embedding, AcroForm, PKCS#7 signing, PDF/A & PDF/X. A dependency-free alternative to mpdf, TCPDF, and the proprietary FPDI.

packagist.org/packages/dskripchenko/php-pdf

Topics

php pdf qrcode barcode pkcs7 digital-signature pure-php acroform html-to-pdf pdf-generator pdf-reader fpdi pdf-merger tagged-pdf pdf-a mpdf-alternative pdf-x fpdi-alternative

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Releases 8

v1.2.2 — Aztec letter-case fix Latest
Jul 18, 2026
+ 7 releases

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