This is a game-changer compared with FPDF because it allows much more dynamic content. But the difference is that it lets you use simple HTML and embedded CSS for the main content of the page. Like FPDF, TCPDF lets you set up margins, headers, footers, etc. TCPDF: Lightweight HTML Parsing (This Is What I Chose) This is a great solution if you need to generate custom certificates, membership cards, name tags, or any document where you have simple custom content over a non-editable background. Simple! Here’s a great tutorial on how to do it. You start with a PDF of a fancy border and seal, and just add the student’s name and date.

Probably the most common application is to generate custom “graduation” certificates for online classes. This is actually a pretty awesome concept. FPDFI: Ideal for CertificatesįPDFI allows you to import a PDF into FPDF (or TCPDF, described later in this article) and add content to it. But, if you need to display complex pages, the coordinate-based approach gets cumbersome and impractical quickly. It’s great for simple documents where the content doesn’t vary much in size. It lets you set things like margins, headers, footers, and page breaks.Īfter initial setup, you construct the page by adding “cells” of content at specific coordinates. It’s free, lightweight, and does not require any special libraries. It’s one of the most popular PHP PDF generators around, and a good place to start. Any search for a PHP PDF generator will lead you at some point to FPDF.

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