Is there any PHP PDF library that can **replace placeholder variables** in an existing PDF, ODT or DOCX document, and generate a PDF file as the end result, without screwing up the layout?
  
Requirements:   

 * Needs no 3rd party web service
 
 * Ability to run on shared web hosting would be ideal (no binary installations / packages required)  

Mind you, a library that is able to load an existing PDF file and insert text programmatically at a specific position is **not enough** for my use case. 

As far as my research shows, there is no library that can do this:

 * TCPDF can only generate documents from scratch

 * FPDI can read existing PDF templates, but can only add contents programmatically (no template variable replacement)

 * There are various DOCX/ODT template libraries out there but they don&#39;t output PDF 


[PHPDOCx][1] claims to be able to do exactly what I need - but they don&#39;t offer a trial version and I&#39;m not going to buy a cat in a bag, especially not when there seems to be *no other product* on the web that does this. I find it hard to believe they can do this without problems - if you have successfully done this using the product, please drop a line here.

Am I overlooking something?

Is there a way to do this using PDF forms? I am creating the source documents in OpenOffice 3.

I may be able to use standard Linux commands (`pdftk` is available for example, trying that out right now.) 

&gt; **Update:** **Argh!** I was called out of the office and the bounty expired in the meantime. Starting a new bounty: As far as my testing shows, no solution works for me perfectly yet.

&gt; **Update II:** I will be looking the pdftk approach soon, but I am also starting another bounty for one more round of collecting additional input. This question has now seen  1300 rep points in bounties, must be some kind of a record :)

  [1]: http://www.phpdocx.com/

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PHP PDF template library with PDF output?