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tc-lib-pdf (TCPDF)

The next generation of TCPDF - a modern, modular PHP library for programmatically generating PDF documents.

💖 Keep TCPDF maintained. tc-lib-pdf is the actively-developed successor to TCPDF, which is installed 100M+ times across 500+ PHP packages and is now maintenance-only. If your company depends on it, become a sponsor to keep this shared infrastructure secure and maintained. See Sponsors for tiers.

Contents

• Overview
• Sponsors
• For TCPDF Users
• Features
• Requirements
• Installation
• Quick Start
• Examples
• In-Depth Documentation
• Contributing

Overview

tc-lib-pdf is a pure-PHP library for generating PDF documents.
It is the modern evolution of TCPDF, built around a modular package architecture, a Composer-first workflow, and strict PHP types.

It coordinates companion packages for fonts, images, graphics, pages, filtering, encryption, and digital signatures into a single document-authoring API.

Why tc-lib-pdf:

• Pure PHP. No external binaries, headless browsers, or shell calls in the rendering pipeline. Only gd and zlib are optional extensions.
• Archival, print, and accessibility conformance in one library. PDF/A (1/2/3, a/b/u), PDF/X (1a, 3, 4, 5), and PDF/UA (1, 2) are built in, under the LGPL.
• Signing up to PAdES B-LTA. Detached CMS and PAdES B-B/B-T/B-LT/B-LTA, with RFC 3161 timestamps, embedded revocation evidence, and support for both local keys and remote HSM signing.
• Reproducible output. Pinning the dates and file identifier renders byte-identical documents on every run, so builds are diffable and verifiable.
• Modular and strictly typed. Each concern is a separate Composer package with declared types, so upgrades and dependencies stay scoped.
• Continuity with TCPDF. The actively-developed successor to a library installed 100M+ times, by the original author.

Releases follow Semantic Versioning:

• PATCH: backwards-compatible bug fixes
• MINOR: backwards-compatible new features
• MAJOR: breaking changes

Sponsors

tc-lib-pdf is the actively-developed successor to TCPDF, which is installed 100M+ times across 500+ PHP packages and is now maintenance-only. Sponsoring funds the ongoing security and maintenance work on both.

Your logo here. Be the first company to back the project: become a sponsor →

See SPONSORS.md for sponsorship tiers, how to add your logo, and the logo/content policy. Individual backers are listed in BACKERS.md.

For TCPDF Users

tc-lib-pdf is not a drop-in replacement for TCPDF:

• The codebase is split across separate Composer packages instead of a single distribution.
• The API is strongly typed and organized around companion services such as fonts, pages, graphics, and images.
• Setup is Composer-first: asset preparation such as font generation is part of project bootstrap, not a bundled step.

The runnable examples in examples/index.md cover the equivalent of most TCPDF workflows.

Features

Text & Fonts

• Full UTF-8 Unicode and right-to-left (RTL) language support
• TrueTypeUnicode, OpenTypeUnicode v1, TrueType, OpenType v1, Type1, and CID-0 fonts
• Supplementary-plane characters above U+FFFF, including mathematical alphanumeric symbols and emoji (doc/FONTS.md)
• Font subsetting to keep file sizes small
• Text hyphenation, stretching, and letter-spacing (tracking)
• Language-aware TeX hyphenation patterns and optional zero-width breakpoints
• Text rendering modes: fill, stroke, and clipping
• Automatic line breaks, page breaks, and justification

Layout & Content

• All standard page sizes, custom formats, custom margins, and configurable units of measure
• HTML and CSS rendering
• SVG rendering
• Multi-column layouts and no-write page regions
• Headers, footers, and common page content
• Bookmarks, named destinations, and table of contents
• Automatic page numbering and page groups
• Full page box control (Media/Crop/Bleed/Trim/Art), page reordering, and viewer preferences
• Per-page transparency group control via setPageTransparencyGroup(): 'auto' (default) emits the page transparency /Group only on pages that use transparency, 'always' emits it on every page, 'never' omits it

Images & Graphics

• Native JPEG, PNG, and SVG support
• Extended image format handling via GD (GD, GD2, GD2PART, GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, XBM, XPM, WBMP, TIFF, ICO, PSD, IFF, SWC)
• Geometric graphics and 2D transformations
• Linear and radial gradients, Coons patch mesh gradients, crop marks, and registration bars
• JPEG and PNG ICC profiles, grayscale/RGB/CMYK/spot colors, transparencies, and overprint control

Security & Standards

• Password and certificate-based document encryption (RC4 and AES, up to 256-bit)
• Remote resource controls via fileOptions with host allowlists plus separate internal and markup local-path allowlists for external assets
• Digital signatures: detached CMS (PKCS#7) and PAdES baseline signatures (ETSI EN 319 142-1) through the signature() facade, with configurable appearance fields. Profiles: legacy (ISO 32000-1 adbe.pkcs7.detached), pades-b-b, pades-b-t, pades-b-lt, pades-b-lta (ETSI.CAdES.detached), with RSA or ECDSA keys and sha256/sha384/sha512 digests. Local (private-key) and external/remote (HSM) signing are both supported. The cryptography lives in tc-lib-pdf-sign; see doc/DIGITAL_SIGNATURES.md
• RFC 3161 TSA timestamps (PAdES B-T): a timestamp token is embedded in the CMS as the id-aa-signatureTimeStampToken attribute, with configurable digest algorithm, policy OID, nonce, timeout, and TLS peer verification. The token is verified and matched against the request before it is embedded
• LTV (Long-Term Validation) (PAdES B-LT): revocation evidence in a post-signing incremental revision:
  • collects the signing certificate chain and fetches OCSP responses and CRL payloads from AIA and CDP URLs
  • verifies every response before embedding it, including the certificates carried by the signature timestamp token
  • deduplicates binary payloads by fingerprint
  • emits a Document Security Store (/DSS) carrying /VRI, /Certs, /OCSPs, and /CRLs, referenced from the re-emitted document catalog
  • OCSP, CRL, cert embedding, DSS, and VRI are each enabled independently through the signature() LTV options
• Archive timestamps (PAdES B-LTA): signature()->upgradeToLta() adds a /Type /DocTimeStamp archive timestamp over the whole document in a further incremental revision
• PDF annotations: links, text notes, file attachments, markup, shapes, media, and widgets
• JavaScript embedding
• PDF/A (1/2/3, including a/b/u conformance levels): see E001_invoice.php for a Factur-X / ZUGFeRD example
• PDF/X (generic alias, PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, PDF/X-4, PDF/X-5): print-exchange conformance covering per-variant OutputIntent identifiers, GTS_PDFXVersion in Info dict and XMP, PDF version enforcement, CMYK color forcing for restrictive profiles (X-1a, X-3), transparency restrictions, and suppression of encryption and JavaScript
• PDF/UA (generic alias, PDF/UA-1, PDF/UA-2): accessibility conformance covering tagged structure tree (StructTreeRoot / ParentTree), MarkInfo /Marked true, document language (/Lang), DisplayDocTitle true, ActualText for ligatures and special glyphs, figure alt-text tagging, and heading-level clamping to prevent skipped levels; PDF/UA-2 targets PDF 2.0

PDF Import

• Import pages from existing PDFs as Form XObjects and place them on any destination page
• Import a single page at a user-defined position and scale (importPage / useImportedPage)
• Append full documents page-by-page, auto-sized to the source page dimensions (addPageFromImport)
• Load source PDFs from a file path or raw byte string (setImportSourceFile / setImportSourceData)

Other

• 1D and 2D barcodes via tc-lib-barcode
• Interactive AcroForm fields (buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, text, combo boxes, list boxes)
• XObject templates and layers with object visibility controls
• Multiple output targets: inline display, forced download, file save, and MIME attachment
• Factur-X / ZUGFeRD / Order-X workflows via embedded XML in PDF/A-3 documents (setFacturX())
• Reproducible output: pin the dates and the file identifier (setDocCreationDate(), setDocModificationDate(), setFileId()) to render the same bytes on every run
• Stream compression via the zlib PHP extension, available in every conformance mode

Requirements

• PHP 8.2 or later
• Composer

Optional PHP extensions: gd, zlib.

Feature-specific prerequisites:

• Digital signatures, timestamps, and LTV require signing certificates and keys, plus any TSA or revocation endpoint the configuration references.
• make preflight runs external validation tools when they are installed.

Installation

1. Install the package with Composer.
2. Generate companion font files (see doc/FONTS.md).
3. Run the minimal script using the generated K_PATH_FONTS path.

Or add to your composer.json:

Quick Start

This example assumes the script lives in the project root; adjust the autoload.php and K_PATH_FONTS paths otherwise.

getOutPDFString() returns the raw PDF bytes. renderPDF() streams those bytes to the browser; to store them in a file or send them as an attachment, keep the returned string.

Note: realpath() returns false when the fonts directory does not exist. A K_PATH_FONTS error on first run means the fonts have not been generated (see doc/FONTS.md).

Examples

The examples directory holds runnable scripts for the supported features.

Starting points:

• examples/index.md: index of available examples.
• examples/E000_overview.php: broad feature overview.
• examples/E006_minimal.php: minimal PDF generation flow.
• examples/E043_html_tables.php: HTML table rendering.
• examples/E027_annotations.php: annotation subtypes.
• examples/E065_import_single_page.php: PDF page import.

Topic groups:

• Document basics (layout, headers/footers, cells, colors, images, text rendering)
• Standards and compliance (PDF/X, PDF/UA, PDF/A workflows)
• Security and signing (encryption, PAdES/PKCS#7 signatures, timestamps, LTV)
• Advanced composition (annotations, templates, layers, page import/reorder)

To run them locally:

Then open http://localhost:8971/E000_overview.php.

In-Depth Documentation

Focused guides in the doc/ directory:

• Font setup, custom fonts, and third-party font licenses: doc/FONTS.md
• ICC profile details: doc/ICC_PROFILE.md
• PDF import API, examples, and fidelity notes: doc/PDF_IMPORT.md
• Remote resources and fileOptions (allowedHosts, allowedPaths, markupAllowedPaths, cURL policy): doc/REMOTE_RESOURCES.md
• External cache for font subsets and images (CacheInterface, selective caching): doc/CACHE.md
• Digital signatures, TSA timestamps, and LTV: doc/DIGITAL_SIGNATURES.md
• PDF/A, PDF/X, and PDF/UA conformance modes: doc/STANDARDS.md
• Development, QA, preflight, and packaging workflows: doc/DEVELOPMENT.md

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please read CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md before submitting a pull request.

1. Fork the repository and create a feature branch.
2. Write or update tests for your change.
3. Run make qa to ensure the full pipeline passes.
4. Open a pull request with a clear description of the change.

Security vulnerabilities should be reported according to SECURITY.md.