mPDF is a PHP library which generates PDF files from UTF-8 encoded HTML.
It is based on FPDF and HTML2FPDF
(see CREDITS), with a number of enhancements. mPDF was written by Ian Back and is released
under the GNU GPL v2 licence.
Note: If you are viewing this file on mPDF GitHub repository homepage or on Packagist, please note that
the default repository branch isdevelopmentwhich can differ from the last stable release.
Requirements
PHP versions and extensions
mPDF >=7.0is supported on PHP^5.6, ~7.0.0, ~7.1.0, ~7.2.0PHP 7.3is supported sincemPDF v7.1.7PHP 7.4is supported sincemPDF v8.0.4
PHP mbstring and gd extensions have to be loaded.
Additional extensions may be required for some advanced features such as zlib for compression of output and
embedded resources such as fonts, bcmath for generating barcodes or xml for character set conversion
and SVG handling.
Known server caveats
mPDF has some problems with fetching external HTTP resources with single threaded servers such as php -S. A proper
server such as nginx (php-fpm) or Apache is recommended.
Support us
Consider supporting development of mPDF with a donation of any value. Donation button can be found on the
main page of the documentation.
Installation
Official installation method is via composer and its packagist package mpdf/mpdf.
$ composer require mpdf/mpdf
Usage
The simplest usage (since version 7.0) of the library would be as follows:
<?php
require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';
$mpdf = new \Mpdf\Mpdf();
$mpdf->WriteHTML('<h1>Hello world!</h1>');
$mpdf->Output();
This will output the PDF inline to the browser as application/pdf Content-type.
Setup & Configuration
All configuration directives can
be set by the $config parameter of the constructor.
It is recommended to set one's own temporary directory via tempDir configuration variable.
The directory must have write permissions (mode 775 is recommended) for users using mPDF
(typically cli, webserver, fpm).
Warning: mPDF will clean up old temporary files in the temporary directory. Choose a path dedicated to mPDF only.
<?php
$mpdf = new \Mpdf\Mpdf(['tempDir' => __DIR__ . '/tmp']);
By default, the temporary directory will be inside vendor directory and will have correct permissions from
post_install composer script.
For more information about custom temporary directory see the note on
Folder for temporary files
in the section on Installation & Setup in the manual.
If you have problems, please read the section on
troubleshooting in the manual.
Online manual
Online manual is available at https://mpdf.github.io/.
For general questions or troubleshooting please use the mpdf tag at Stack Overflow (and not the project's issue tracker).
Contributing
Please read before submitting issues and pull requests the CONTRIBUTING.md file.
Unit Testing
Unit testing for mPDF is done using PHPUnit.
To get started, run composer install from the command line while in the mPDF root directory
(you'll need composer installed first).
To execute tests, run vendor/bin/phpunit from the command line while in the mPDF root directory.
Any assistance writing unit tests for mPDF is greatly appreciated. If you'd like to help, please
note that any PHP file located in the /tests/ directory will be autoloaded when unit testing.