Writing/Drawing over a PDF template document in PHP
PhpPdfPhp Problem Overview
I'd like to be able to write/overlay text over an existing pdf document using PHP. What I am hoping to do is have a pdf document that can act as a template, and fill in the gaps by opening the template doc, overlaying the relevant text, and serving the result as a new document. The template document is a single page so page merging/manipulation is not necessary.
Are there any free libraries that can do this? Anywhere I should look? Most searches I've done seem to deal with merging documents/adding pages, instead of overlaying content over an existing page.
Thanks.
*EDIT: Here is what I did:
- Download FPDF
- Download FPDI + FPDF_TPL from
http://www.setasign.de/products/pdf-php-solutions/fpdi/downloads/
Here is some sample code for any future wanderers (adapted from the samples at www.setasign.de):
<?php
include('fpdf.php');
include('fpdi.php');
// initiate FPDI
$pdf =& new FPDI();
// add a page
$pdf->AddPage();
// set the sourcefile
$pdf->setSourceFile('templatedoc.pdf');
// import page 1
$tplIdx = $pdf->importPage(1);
// use the imported page as the template
$pdf->useTemplate($tplIdx, 0, 0);
// now write some text above the imported page
$pdf->SetFont('Arial');
$pdf->SetTextColor(255,0,0);
$pdf->SetXY(25, 25);
$pdf->Write(0, "This is just a simple text");
$pdf->Output('newpdf.pdf', 'D');
?>
Php Solutions
Solution 1 - Php
Have a look at the FPDI Library an add on to FPDF for template annotation.
It can also bolt-on to TCPDF, another popular PHP PDF library. An existing PDF is used as the base of a page, instead of a blank, after that the procedures are the same as regular PDF creation.
Solution 2 - Php
You probably want to use PDF Forms for what you want to do. To fill these babies you could use the FDF method described here: Using HTML forms to fill in PDF fields with PHP and FDF.
There is actually another nice SO post about PDF form filling here: Filling PDF Forms with PHP.
Solution 3 - Php
When you want to use PDF lib to write over a document, positionning is time consuming and boring. Dhek is useful for such task: https://github.com/cchantep/dhek/releases .
JSON mapping over PDF page/coordinates is defined, so that you can write with PDF API you prefer.