SnapAPI Driver for Laravel PDF

A spatie/laravel-pdf v2 driver that generates PDFs via SnapAPI — a managed screenshot and PDF API powered by Chromium. No Chrome to install, no Lambda setup, no Docker layer headaches.

Pdf::view('invoices.receipt', ['invoice' => $invoice])
    ->format('A4')
    ->driver(SnapApiDriver::class)
    ->save(storage_path('invoices/receipt.pdf'));

Why use this?

• ✅ No Chromium to manage — no binary updates, no memory limits to tune
• ✅ Works everywhere — local, shared hosting, serverless, Docker
• ✅ Full CSS support — Flexbox, Grid, Tailwind, web fonts, all rendered by a real Chromium
• ✅ Free tier — 200 PDFs/month, no credit card

Requirements

• PHP 8.1+
• Laravel 10, 11, or 12
• spatie/laravel-pdf v2
• A free SnapAPI key

Installation

composer require snapapi/laravel-pdf

Publish the config file:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=snapapi-pdf-config

Configuration

Add your API key to .env:

SNAPAPI_KEY=sk_live_your_key_here

Get a free key at snapapi.pics — free tier includes 200 PDFs/month.

Usage

Basic PDF from Blade view

use Spatie\LaravelPdf\Facades\Pdf;
use SnapApi\LaravelPdf\SnapApiDriver;

Pdf::view('pdfs.invoice', ['invoice' => $invoice])
    ->driver(SnapApiDriver::class)
    ->save(storage_path('pdfs/invoice.pdf'));

Respond with PDF download

return Pdf::view('pdfs.invoice', ['invoice' => $invoice])
    ->driver(SnapApiDriver::class)
    ->format('A4')
    ->download('invoice.pdf');

Respond inline (open in browser)

return Pdf::view('pdfs.report', $data)
    ->driver(SnapApiDriver::class)
    ->inline('report.pdf');

Set format and margins

Pdf::view('pdfs.letter', $data)
    ->driver(SnapApiDriver::class)
    ->format('Letter')
    ->margins(top: 15, right: 10, bottom: 15, left: 10)
    ->landscape()
    ->save('/path/to/output.pdf');

From raw HTML

Pdf::html('<h1>Hello World</h1><p>Generated by SnapAPI.</p>')
    ->driver(SnapApiDriver::class)
    ->save('/path/to/output.pdf');

Set as default driver

In config/pdf.php (published from spatie/laravel-pdf):

'default_driver' => \SnapApi\LaravelPdf\SnapApiDriver::class,

Then you can omit ->driver() entirely:

Pdf::view('pdfs.invoice', $data)->save('invoice.pdf');

Configuration reference

config/snapapi-pdf.php:

return [
    'api_key'  => env('SNAPAPI_KEY', ''),
    'base_url' => env('SNAPAPI_BASE_URL', 'https://api.snapapi.pics'),
    'timeout'  => env('SNAPAPI_TIMEOUT', 60),
];

Testing

composer test

Changelog

1.0.0

• Initial release
• Supports generatePdf and savePdf (full spatie/laravel-pdf v2 driver interface)
• Paper format, margins, orientation, custom width/height
• Header and footer HTML support

License

MIT — see LICENSE

Links

• 🔑 Get a free SnapAPI key
• 📖 SnapAPI docs
• 📦 spatie/laravel-pdf