snappdf

This is a simple library that lets you convert webpages or HTML into the PDF file using Chromium or Google Chrome.

snappdf

Usage

Here's quick example, how it works:

$snappdf = new \Beganovich\Snappdf\Snappdf();

$pdf = $snappdf
    ->setHtml('<h1>Hello world!</h1>')
    ->save('/path/to/your/file.pdf');

In case you want to convert web page into the PDF, you can use setUrl() instead of setHtml():

$snappdf = new \Beganovich\Snappdf\Snappdf();

$pdf = $snappdf
    ->setUrl('https://github.com')
    ->save('/path/to/your/file.pdf');

.. if you need specific version of Chrome, or don't want to use locally downloaded Chromium, make use of setChromiumPath method.

$snappdf = new \Beganovich\Snappdf\Snappdf();

$pdf = $snappdf
    ->setUrl('https://github.com')
    ->setChromiumPath('/path/to/your/chrome')
    ->save('/path/to/your/file.pdf');

If you need to generate PDF only, without saving it, make use of generate():

$snappdf = new \Beganovich\Snappdf\Snappdf();

$pdf = $snappdf
    ->setUrl('https://github.com')
    ->setChromiumPath('/path/to/your/chrome')
    ->generate();

file_put_contents('my.pdf', $pdf); // for local storage

Storage::disk('s3')->put('my.pdf', $pdf); // for remote storage

If none of previously listed option fits your needs, you can also set path to executable Chromium with environment variable.

SNAPPDF_EXECUTABLE_PATH=/path/to/your/chrome

Note: setChromiumPath has highest priority. Second one is environment variable & third local download.

Speed

Main benefit and reason why this library exists is the speed of generating PDFs. It communicates directly with browser itself and it takes less than .5s to generate PDFs (with cold start). This was tested on mid-range laptop with i5-5300U and average SSD.

➜  snappdf git:(master) ./vendor/bin/phpunit --testdox --filter=testGeneratingPdfWorks
PHPUnit 9.5.0 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

Snappdf (Test\Snappdf\Snappdf)
 ✔ Generating pdf works

Time: 00:00.199, Memory: 6.00 MB

OK (1 test, 1 assertion)
➜  snappdf git:(master) ./vendor/bin/phpunit --testdox --filter=testGeneratingPdfWorks
PHPUnit 9.5.0 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

Snappdf (Test\Snappdf\Snappdf)
 ✔ Generating pdf works

Time: 00:00.171, Memory: 6.00 MB

OK (1 test, 1 assertion)

Requirements

PHP 7.3+

Installation

Composer is recommended way of installing library:

composer require beganovich/snappdf

Downloading local Chromium

snappdf can download & use local revision of Chromium. To achieve that, you can use:

./vendor/bin/snappdf download

You can find local downloads/revisions in %projectRoot%/vendor/beganovich/snappdf/versions.

Local revision will be used only when you don't provide path using setChromiumPath().

Note: snappdf will download & use latest build of Chromium. Since Chromium itself doesn't have stable or unstable release, browser itself can be buggy or possibly broken. We don't take any responsibility for that. If security & stability is your top priority, please install Google Chrome stable version & point package to use that.

Skip the Chromium download

If you need to dynamically skip the download, make use of SNAPPDF_SKIP_DOWNLOAD environment variable.

Create a test PDF

A simple way to make sure that generating the PDF works is by running the following command:

./vendor/bin/snappdf test /path/where/to/save/example.pdf

If you want to run it using different binary, you can specify that too:

./vendor/bin/snappdf test /path/to/example.pdf /usr/bin/google-chrome

Comparison to Browsershot

In case you need much more complex software to perform operations with headless browser go for Spatie's Browsershot. It's fantastic package. Purpose of snappdf is to be really minimal & only focus on making PDFs.

Also, snappdf doesn't need Node installed to operate.

Credits

Licence

The MIT License (MIT).

jacekpl/snappdf