dskripchenko/php-pdf

Pure-PHP, MIT-licensed PDF generator. A drop-in alternative for mpdf/mpdf (GPL-2.0) — no licensing friction for OEM, on-premise installers, or proprietary bundles.

Languages: English · Русский · 中文 · Deutsch

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Contents

• Why this library
• Installation
• Quick start
• Feature highlights
• Documentation
• Performance
• Requirements
• Testing
• License

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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.

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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.

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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());

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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.

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.

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

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Documentation

• 📖 Usage guide — paragraphs, tables, charts, barcodes, forms, encryption, signing, PDF/A.
• ⚖️ Comparison vs mpdf / tcpdf / dompdf / FPDF — feature matrix, when to choose each.
• 📊 Benchmarks — reproducible wall-time, memory, and output-size measurements.

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Performance

Median of 5 isolated subprocess runs on macOS 25 / PHP 8.4. Full methodology and reproducer in docs/en/BENCHMARKS.md.

Scenario	dskripchenko/php-pdf	mpdf	tcpdf	dompdf	FPDF
HTML → PDF article (~5 pages)	10.8 ms	61.1 ms	36.1 ms	46.9 ms	n/a
100-page invoice (50 rows/page)	518 ms	2367 ms	1349 ms	8891 ms	26 ms
Image grid (20 pages × 4)	6.4 ms	35.9 ms	15.3 ms	30.4 ms	1.0 ms
Hello world (1 page)	4.6 ms	29.8 ms	14.8 ms	12.0 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.

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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.

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Testing

composer install
vendor/bin/phpunit

1977 tests, ~119k assertions, all passing on PHP 8.2 / 8.3 / 8.4.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Copyright © 2026 Denis Skripchenko.