How To Convert HTML To PDF With PHP

(Guide For Windows. Not Mac or Linux)

(Image Source)

There's more than one way to convert HTML to a PDF in PHP. You can use Dompdf or Mpdf; however, there is a difference in how these two libraries are doing it.

Note: Not all solutions will be in this article.

To use both these libraries, you will need Composer.

Converting HTML To PDF With Dompdf

I also show the code in the article discussing why the PDF sometimes won't open when using Dompdf.

    <?php
        require 'vendor/autoload.php';

        // reference the Dompdf namespace
        use Dompdf\Dompdf;

        $content = '<h1>Hello World</h1>';

        // instantiate and use the dompdf class
        $dompdf = new Dompdf();
        $dompdf->loadHtml($content);

        // (Optional) Setup the paper size and orientation
        $dompdf->setPaper('A4', 'landscape');

        // Render the HTML as PDF
        $dompdf->render();

        ob_end_clean();

        // Output the generated PDF to Browser
        $dompdf->stream();
    ?>

With this code, the PDF is downloaded.

Converting HTML To PDF With Mpdf

<?php
    require_once __DIR__. '/vendor/autoload.php';
    use Mpdf\Mpdf;
    $mpdf = new Mpdf();
    $mpdf->WriteHTML('<h1>Hello world! Hi</h1>');
    $mpdf->Output();
?>

With this code, the PDF is opened in the browser when you navigate to your file (Example: localhost/test1.php)