The PDFlib is the commercial PDF solution for PHP. If you’re already using the Zend Framework for your project and you need some basic PDF function, you should go for this dynamic PDF solution. Like many other classes inside the Zend Framework is the documentation very limited for this class as well. The Zend framework has also PDF generation class, which has less functions than FPDF or the other classes. The documentation for the TCPDF project is not so good as for the FPDF class, but there are a lot of well-documented examples. Even for projects where I have used the FPDF class, it was very easy to make the move to this project. The missing support for UTF-8 in FPDF was the reason that I use the TCPDF class for all my projects now. Now is this project a great PDF generator with great image functions including support for the CMYK color mode. The TCPDF class was in the beginning a rewrite for PHP5 with the support for UTF-8. Like many other PDF scripts is the TCPDF project based on FPDF, too. The original version doesn’t support UTF-8, but since a while there is class extension named tFPDF which supports UTF-8. The latest version is from June 2011 and I hope the next version is written for PHP5. The project website offers great documentation and also a lot of useful code examples. I’ve used this class 8 years ago to generate PDF documents in several eCommerce applications. The FPDF class is written for PHP4 and was the first free PHP script for creating PDF files “on the fly”. The following classes are written to generate PDF files “from the scratch” by using native PHP functions: FPDF

This list is a showcase of the most popular PHP classes and libraries. As a developer, you can use several free PHP classes and there is also the PDFlib library which is a commercial product. Using PHP it’s possible generate those PDF files. There are plenty of situations were a dynamic PDF document is a great way to solve problems, too. Think about order documents in your eCommerce application, coupons for your marketing campaign or just the PDF version from your web page. There are several situations where a dynamic PDF file is a great solution to offer digital documents right in your web application.

Php pdf creator