PDF Editing in PHP

Question

Does anyone know of a good method for editing PDFs in PHP  Preferably open-source zero-license cost methods      I am thinking along the lines of opening a PDF file  replacing text in the PDF and then writing out the modified version of the PDF   I have programmatically created PDF files in the past using FPDF  but found it a little unwieldy at times

User · Answer

If you need really simple PDFs  then Zend or FPDF is fine  However I find them difficult and frustrating to work with  Also  because of the way the API works  there s no good way to separate content from presentation from business logic   For that reason  I use dompdf  which automatically converts HTML and CSS to PDF documents  You can lay out a template just as you would for an HTML page and use standard HTML syntax  You can even include an external CSS file  The library isn t perfect and very complex markup or css sometimes gets mangled  but I haven t found anything else that works as well

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lt  php    getting new instance  pdfFile   new pdf     PDF open file  pdfFile           document info pdf set info  pdfFile   Auther    Ahmed Elbshry    pdf set info  pdfFile   Creator    Ahmed Elbshry    pdf set info  pdfFile   Title    PDFlib    pdf set info  pdfFile   Subject    Using PDFlib       starting our page and define the width and highet of the document pdf begin page  pdfFile  595  842      check if Arial font is found  or exit if  font   PDF findfont  pdfFile   Arial    winansi   1         PDF setfont  pdfFile   font  12     else       echo   Font Not Found         PDF end page  pdfFile       PDF close  pdfFile       PDF delete  pdfFile       exit         start writing from the point 50 780 PDF show xy  pdfFile   This Text In Arial Font   50  780   PDF end page  pdfFile   PDF close  pdfFile      store the pdf document in  pdf  pdf   PDF get buffer  pdfFile     get  the len to tell the browser about it  pdflen   strlen  pdfFile      telling the browser about the pdf document header  Content-type  application pdf    header  Content-length   pdflen    header  Content-Disposition  inline  filename phpMade pdf      output the document print  pdf     delete the object PDF delete  pdfFile     gt

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We use pdflib to create PDF files from our rails apps  It has bindings for PHP  and a ton of other languages  We use the commmercial version  but they also have a free open source version which has some limitations  Unfortunately  this only allows creation of PDF s  If you want to open and  edit  existing files  pdflib do provide a product which does this this  but costs a LOT

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The PDF pdflib extension documentation in PHP is sparse  something that has been noted in bugs php net  - I reccommend you use the Zend library

User · Answer

If you are taking a  fill in the blank  approach  you can precisely position text anywhere you want on the page  So it s relatively easy  if not a bit tedious  to add the missing text to the document  For example with Zend Framework    lt  php require once  Zend Pdf php     pdf   Zend Pdf  load  blank pdf     page    pdf- gt pages 0    font   Zend Pdf Font  fontWithName Zend Pdf Font  FONT HELVETICA    page- gt setFont  font  12    page- gt drawText  Hello world    72  720    pdf- gt save  zend pdf      If you re trying to replace inline content  such as a   placeholder string    it gets much more complicated  While it s technically possible to do  you re likely to mess up the layout of the page   A PDF document is comprised of a set of primitive drawing operations  line here  image here  text chunk there  etc  It does not contain any information about the layout intent of those primitives

User · Answer

Don t know if this is an option  but it would work very similar to Zend s pdf library  but you don t need to load a bunch of extra code  the zend framework   It just extends FPDF   http   www setasign de products pdf-php-solutions fpdi   Here you can basically do the same thing  Load the PDF  write over top of it  and then save to a new PDF  In FPDI you basically insert the PDF as an image so you can put whatever you want over it   But again  this uses FPDF  so if you don t want to use that  then it won t work

User · Answer

There is a free and easy to use PDF class to create PDF documents  It s called FPDF  In combination with FPDI  http   www setasign de products pdf-php-solutions fpdi  it is even possible to edit PDF documents   The following code shows how to use FPDF and FPDI to fill an existing gift coupon with the user data   require once  fpdf php     require once  fpdi php      pdf   new FPDI      pdf- gt AddPage       pdf- gt setSourceFile  gift coupon pdf        import page 1   tplIdx    this- gt pdf- gt importPage 1      use the imported page and place it at point 0 0  calculate width and height   automaticallay and ajust the page size to the size of the imported page   this- gt pdf- gt useTemplate  tplIdx  0  0  0  0  true        now write some text above the imported page   this- gt pdf- gt SetFont  Arial        13      this- gt pdf- gt SetTextColor 0 0 0     set position in pdf document  this- gt pdf- gt SetXY 20  20     first parameter defines the line height  this- gt pdf- gt Write 0   gift code      force the browser to download the output  this- gt pdf- gt Output  gift coupon generated pdf    D

User · Answer

Tcpdf is also a good liabrary for generating pdf in php  http   www tcpdf org

User · Answer

I really had high hopes for dompdf  it is a cool idea  but the positioning issue are a major factor in my using fpdf   Though it is tedious as every element has to be set  it is powerful as all get out    I lay an image underneath my workspace in the document to put my layout on top of to fit   Its always been sufficient even for columns  requires a tiny bit of php string calculation  but nothing too terribly heady    Good luck

User · Answer

Zend Framework can load and edit existing PDF files  I think it supports revisions too  I use it to create docs in a project  and it works great  Never edited one though  Check out the doc here

[php] PDF Editing in PHP?

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