How to Generate a PDF File in PHP

In this article, we’re going to discuss how you can generate PDF files in PHP. We'll use the TCPDF library to demonstrate how to create PDF documents.

In this article, we’re going to discuss how you can generate PDF files in PHP. We'll use the TCPDF library to create PDF documents programmatically.

If you’re working on a website which allows users to download or print documents like order receipts, bills, or invoices, you have a couple of options. You can either display the document inline in the browser or provide a download. When it comes to downloading documents, PDF is one of the best formats and is excellent at preserving text formatting.

So if you want to learn how to generate PDF files on your PHP website, you’re in the right place!

How to Install the TCPDF Library

In this section, we’ll see how to install the TCPDF library.

There are different ways to install the TCPDF library on your server. The TCPDF library is available at Packagist and GitHub, so you could either use Composer or clone it from GitHub. In our case, we’re going to install it with Composer.

Go ahead and run the following command to install the TCPDF library with Composer.

$composer require tecnickcom/tcpdf

Using version ^6.3 for tecnickcom/tcpdf

./composer.json has been created

Loading composer repositories with package information

Updating dependencies (including require-dev)

Package operations: 1 install, 0 updates, 0 removals

- Installing tecnickcom/tcpdf (6.3.5): Downloading (100%)

Writing lock file

Generating autoload files

Once it’s installed successfully, you need to include the autoload.php file in your PHP script, as shown in the following snippet.

require "./vendor/autoload.php"; 

And with that, you’re ready to use all the utility methods provided by the TCPDF library.

How to Use the TCPDF Library

In this section, we’ll build a real-world example, which demonstrates how to generate a PDF invoice. The TCPDF library provides a lot of ready-made templates that you could use as a reference to generate PDF documents. However, we’re going to generate an invoice from scratch.

As I’ve already mentioned in the previous section, the TCPDF library provides a lot of ready-made templates that allow you to generate generic PDF files with headers and footers. And that’s really useful if you’re happy with the default formatting and settings. But if you want to customize the header and footer along with the content, you would have to extend the TCPDF class and override the corresponding methods.

In our example, we’ll create two files: customPdfGenerator.php and example.php. In the customPdfGenerator.php file, we’ll create the CustomPdfGenerator class, which will extend the core TCPDF class and override a couple of methods. In the example.php file, we’ll see how to use the CustomPdfGenerator class.

The CustomPdfGenerator Class

Go ahead and create the customPdfGenerator.php file with the following contents.

class CustomPdfGenerator extends TCPDF