PDF Editing in PHP? [closed]

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.

Answer 1

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:

<?php
require_once 'Zend/Pdf.php';

$pdf = Zend_Pdf::load('blank.pdf');
$page = $pdf->pages[0];
$font = Zend_Pdf_Font::fontWithName(Zend_Pdf_Font::FONT_HELVETICA);
$page->setFont($font, 12);
$page->drawText('Hello world!', 72, 720);
$pdf->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.

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

<?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);
?>