How To Create/Save/Download PDF From Blade Template In PHP Laravel

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Hola! you amazing people, I am back with a new article. In this article I will explain you how to create a PDF from a blade template with niklasravnsborg/laravel-pdf package. This package is a wrapper around mPDF.

Prerequisites

You have a composer installed in your computer. If not then you should definitely do it.

Have a fresh copy of Laravel project or a working project. If you want to create a new Laravel project with composer then use the following command.

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel blog

Step 1 – Install `Laravel PDF` Package With Composer

Install the LaravelPdf package with the following command

composer require niklasravnsborg/laravel-pdf

This package is having auto discovery feature after Laravel 5.5+. If your still using the Laravel version below 5.5 then carry on with the following

Paste the following code in config/app.php

'providers' => [ // ... niklasravnsborg\LaravelPdf\PdfServiceProvider::class ]

'aliases' => [ // ... 'PDF' => niklasravnsborg\LaravelPdf\Facades\Pdf::class ]

After adding the above code run the following command

php artisan vendor:publish

Step 2 – Create PDF Invoice Sample Blade Template

Following is the sample image of how it looks. Feel free to use the code and implement it in your project.

NOTE: Use the link to copy the code from GITHUB GIST.

PDF Invoice HTML Template Sample

Use the above GITHUB GIST code for quickly creating the template for PDF inside view/invoices/pdf-invoice.blade.php

Step 3 – Creating Routes

The following in the route, I have secured it within the user_auth middleware. Its not a mandatory but I have shown it so that if anyone who want to implement it securely they can do it.

/** User Related URL's */ Route::middleware(['user_auth'])->group(function () { /** Other URL's */ Route::get('/invoices/{project}/pdf-invoice', 'InvoicesController@savePdfInvoice'); });

The above Route URL points to InvoicesController Class and savePdfInvoice method & accepts {project} as parameter for route model binding.

Step 4 – Controller Code To Save PDF To Public Path

I am saving the PDF to my public/uploads/invoices/ folder. Following is the code to implement the PDF in your controller to Save PDF.

Overview Example (Check below for full implementation example)

Using $pdf->save('path_to_save') to save the file

use PDF; class InvoicesController { public static function savePdfInvoice(Project $project) { $pdf = PDF::loadView('invoices.pdf-invoice', [ /** Data required for view */ ]); $invoiceName = 'Name of the invoice to store'; /** Here you can use the path you want to save */ $pdf->save(public_path('uploads/invoices/'. $invoiceName)); } }

Full Implementation Example

Using $pdf->save('path_to_save') to save the file

public static function savePdfInvoice(Project $project) { $priceDetails = ProjectsController::getProjectAmountDetails($project); $amount = $priceDetails['amount']; $gstAmount = $priceDetails['gstAmount']; $totalAmount = $priceDetails['totalAmount']; /** first param is the blade template, second param is the array of data need for the invoice */ $pdf = PDF::loadView('invoices.pdf-invoice', [ 'project' => $project, 'userDetails' => self::loggedInUserDetails(), 'amount' => $amount, 'gstAmount' => $gstAmount, 'totalAmount' => $totalAmount, ]); /** Creating the unique name for pdf */ $invoiceName = $project->unique_id.'-'.time().'_'.date('Y-m-d').'.pdf'; /** Save the PDF to /public/uploads/invoices/ folder */ $pdf->save(public_path('uploads/invoices/'. $invoiceName)); }

Step 5 – Controller Code To Download PDF

In Step 4 you saw how to save the file to particular location. In this step you will learn how to download the PDF file

Use $pdf->download('invoice_name') to download the file

Full Implementation Of the Same. The code remains same as in that of Step 4, only $pdf->download will be used

public static function savePdfInvoice(Project $project) { $priceDetails = ProjectsController::getProjectAmountDetails($project); $amount = $priceDetails['amount']; $gstAmount = $priceDetails['gstAmount']; $totalAmount = $priceDetails['totalAmount']; $pdf = PDF::loadView('invoices.pdf-invoice', [ 'project' => $project, 'userDetails' => self::loggedInUserDetails(), 'amount' => $amount, 'gstAmount' => $gstAmount, 'totalAmount' => $totalAmount, ]); $invoiceNumber = $project->id + 1000; $pdf->download('Invoice#'. $invoiceNumber .'.pdf'); }

Step 6 – PDF Configurations in `config` folder

When you do php artisan vendor:publish you will get pdf.php inside config folder where you can do global settings for your PDF.

The following is the default configuration

return [ 'mode' => 'utf-8', 'format' => 'A4', 'author' => '', 'subject' => '', 'keywords' => '', 'creator' => 'StackCoder', 'display_mode' => 'fullpage', 'tempDir' => public_path('temp') ];

As you can see in the above settings I have set the format of PDF to A4 sheet. And creator to StackCoder. For more details on the same visit the package in GITHUB repo.

Step 7 – Other PDF Methods

You have seen how to download & save the PDF, now lets see the method offered by PDF

output(): Outputs the PDF as a string. save($filename): Save the PDF to a file download($filename): Make the PDF downloadable by the user. stream($filename): Return a response with the PDF to show in the browser.

For more details on the PDF option view this Laravel PDF package.