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In this blog, I will be showing you how to generate PDFs from HTML in Laravel 8. PDF has been one of the most commonly used document formats today. Most of the web apps have a functionality that generates a PDF for invoices. receipts, reports, and others.
What is a PDF? It stands for Portable Document Format. It is a file format developed by Adobe to present or display documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems.
Laravel is a free, open-source PHP Web Framework intended for the development of web applications following the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architectural pattern. Laravel is designed to make developing web apps faster and easier by using built-in features.
Tutorial Video:
Step 1: Install Laravel 8
Run this command on Terminal or CMD to install Laravel via composer:
composer create-project laravel/laravel="8.*" laravel-8-pdf
or via Laravel Installer:
laravel new laravel-8-pdf
Step 2: Install DOMPDF Package
We will then install this package barryvdh/laravel-dompdf, this package will be used to generate a PDF file.
composer require barryvdh/laravel-dompdf
after installing we will then it to the providers’ array and facade array in config/app.php
<?php
return [
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Application Name
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| This value is the name of your application. This value is used when the
| framework needs to place the application's name in a notification or
| any other location as required by the application or its packages.
|
*/
'name' => env('APP_NAME', 'Laravel'),
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Application Environment
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| This value determines the "environment" your application is currently
| running in. This may determine how you prefer to configure various
| services the application utilizes. Set this in your ".env" file.
|
*/
'env' => env('APP_ENV', 'production'),
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Application Debug Mode
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| When your application is in debug mode, detailed error messages with
| stack traces will be shown on every error that occurs within your
| application. If disabled, a simple generic error page is shown.
|
*/
'debug' => (bool) env('APP_DEBUG', false),
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Application URL
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| This URL is used by the console to properly generate URLs when using
| the Artisan command line tool. You should set this to the root of
| your application so that it is used when running Artisan tasks.
|
*/
'url' => env('APP_URL', 'http://localhost'),
'asset_url' => env('ASSET_URL', null),
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Application Timezone
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Here you may specify the default timezone for your application, which
| will be used by the PHP date and date-time functions. We have gone
| ahead and set this to a sensible default for you out of the box.
|
*/
'timezone' => 'UTC',
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Application Locale Configuration
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| The application locale determines the default locale that will be used
| by the translation service provider. You are free to set this value
| to any of the locales which will be supported by the application.
|
*/
'locale' => 'en',
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Application Fallback Locale
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| The fallback locale determines the locale to use when the current one
| is not available. You may change the value to correspond to any of
| the language folders that are provided through your application.
|
*/
'fallback_locale' => 'en',
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Faker Locale
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| This locale will be used by the Faker PHP library when generating fake
| data for your database seeds. For example, this will be used to get
| localized telephone numbers, street address information and more.
|
*/
'faker_locale' => 'en_US',
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Encryption Key
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| This key is used by the Illuminate encrypter service and should be set
| to a random, 32 character string, otherwise these encrypted strings
| will not be safe. Please do this before deploying an application!
|
*/
'key' => env('APP_KEY'),
'cipher' => 'AES-256-CBC',
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Autoloaded Service Providers
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| The service providers listed here will be automatically loaded on the
| request to your application. Feel free to add your own services to
| this array to grant expanded functionality to your applications.
|
*/
'providers' => [
/*
* Laravel Framework Service Providers...
*/
Illuminate\Auth\AuthServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Broadcasting\BroadcastServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Bus\BusServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Cache\CacheServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Foundation\Providers\ConsoleSupportServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Cookie\CookieServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Database\DatabaseServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Encryption\EncryptionServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Filesystem\FilesystemServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Foundation\Providers\FoundationServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Hashing\HashServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Mail\MailServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Notifications\NotificationServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Pagination\PaginationServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Pipeline\PipelineServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Queue\QueueServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Redis\RedisServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Auth\Passwords\PasswordResetServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Session\SessionServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Translation\TranslationServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Validation\ValidationServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\View\ViewServiceProvider::class,
/*
* Package Service Providers...
*/
/*
* Application Service Providers...
*/
App\Providers\AppServiceProvider::class,
App\Providers\AuthServiceProvider::class,
// App\Providers\BroadcastServiceProvider::class,
App\Providers\EventServiceProvider::class,
App\Providers\RouteServiceProvider::class,
Barryvdh\DomPDF\ServiceProvider::class,//Add this code
],
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Class Aliases
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| This array of class aliases will be registered when this application
| is started. However, feel free to register as many as you wish as
| the aliases are "lazy" loaded so they don't hinder performance.
|
*/
'aliases' => [
'App' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\App::class,
'Arr' => Illuminate\Support\Arr::class,
'Artisan' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Artisan::class,
'Auth' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth::class,
'Blade' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Blade::class,
'Broadcast' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Broadcast::class,
'Bus' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Bus::class,
'Cache' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Cache::class,
'Config' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Config::class,
'Cookie' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Cookie::class,
'Crypt' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Crypt::class,
'Date' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Date::class,
'DB' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB::class,
'Eloquent' => Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model::class,
'Event' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Event::class,
'File' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\File::class,
'Gate' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Gate::class,
'Hash' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Hash::class,
'Http' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http::class,
'Lang' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Lang::class,
'Log' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Log::class,
'Mail' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Mail::class,
'Notification' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Notification::class,
'Password' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Password::class,
'Queue' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Queue::class,
'RateLimiter' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\RateLimiter::class,
'Redirect' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Redirect::class,
// 'Redis' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Redis::class,
'Request' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Request::class,
'Response' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Response::class,
'Route' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route::class,
'Schema' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema::class,
'Session' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Session::class,
'Storage' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage::class,
'Str' => Illuminate\Support\Str::class,
'URL' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\URL::class,
'Validator' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\Validator::class,
'View' => Illuminate\Support\Facades\View::class,
'PDF' => Barryvdh\DomPDF\Facade::class,//Add this code
],
];
you can optionally publish the default configs by running this command:
php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Barryvdh\DomPDF\ServiceProvider"
Step 3: Create A View
After installing and setting up the package, we will now create the view file that we will then convert to PDF. Create a file name resume.blade.php in resources/views directory and add these lines of codes:
/resources/views/resume.blade.php
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
<title>Resume</title>
</head>
<body>
<div style="margin: 0 auto;display: block;width: 500px;">
<table width="100%" border="1">
<tr>
<td colspan="2">
<img src="{{$imagePath}}" style="width:200px;">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Name:</td>
<td>{{$name}}</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Address:</td>
<td>{{$address}}</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Mobile Number:</td>
<td>{{$mobileNumber}}</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Email:</td>
<td>{{$email}}</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Before proceeding to the next step, make sure you have an image file in the /public directory since we will be adding an image when we generate the PDF file. Here is my sample image used that is saved on /public/img/profile.png :
Step 4: Create A Controller
We will now create our controller, run this command to create a controller:
php artisan make:controller PdfGeneratorController
After creating a controller add this method:
/app/Http/Controllers/PdfGeneratorController.php
<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use PDF;
class PdfGeneratorController extends Controller
{
public function index()
{
$data = [
'imagePath' => public_path('img/profile.png'),
'name' => 'John Doe',
'address' => 'USA',
'mobileNumber' => '000000000',
'email' => 'john.doe@email.com'
];
$pdf = PDF::loadView('resume', $data);
return $pdf->stream('resume.pdf');
}
}
Step 5: Register Route
Now we will be registering the route for generating the PDF File. Open the file /routes/web.php and update the routes:
/routes/web.php
<?php
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;
use App\Http\Controllers\PdfGeneratorController;
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Web Routes
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Here is where you can register web routes for your application. These
| routes are loaded by the RouteServiceProvider within a group which
| contains the "web" middleware group. Now create something great!
|
*/
Route::get('/', function () {
return view('welcome');
});
Route::get('/resume', [PdfGeneratorController::class, 'index']);
Step 6: Run the Application
After finishing the steps above, you can now run your application by executing the code below:
php artisan serve
After successfully running your app, open this URL in your browser:
http://localhost:8000/resume
Screenshots:
Final Output
