Laravel PDF Templates

PDF templates for Laravel, stored in the database, filled with JSON and rendered from your code or over HTTP. You can use it instead of a hosted service such as apitemplate.io.

There are two template modes:

• WYSIWYG: a visual designer (pdfme) for fields on the page, tables, images, QR/barcodes and a background PDF.
• HTML + CSS: code with {placeholders}, loops, conditions and filters, rendered by dompdf.

It comes with a standalone admin UI (like log-viewer or Telescope) in light and dark themes. The UI has a template list, the designer, an HTML editor with live preview, and a JSON test page that shows the fields each template expects.

Requirements

• PHP 8.2+ and Laravel 11, 12 or 13. Laravel 13 needs PHP 8.3+.
• Node.js 18+, only to render WYSIWYG templates on the server (in code or through the API). The browser designer and the HTML mode don't need Node.

Installation

composer require anghelutav/laravel-pdf-templates
php artisan pdf-templates:install --examples

This publishes config/pdf-templates.php, creates the pdf_templates table and adds three example templates.

Open /pdf-templates. In the local environment it's open to everyone. Everywhere else, define who may use it, for example in AppServiceProvider::boot():

Gate::define('viewPdfTemplates', fn ($user = null) => $user?->is_admin);

Usage in code

use AnghelutaV\PdfTemplates\Facades\PdfTemplates;

// From a controller: shown inline in the browser
return PdfTemplates::make('invoice', $data);

// Download, store, base64, mail attachment
return PdfTemplates::make('invoice', $data)->filename("invoice-{$order->id}")->download();
PdfTemplates::make('invoice', $data)->save("invoices/{$order->id}.pdf", 's3');
$base64 = PdfTemplates::make('invoice', $data)->base64();

// Raw bytes
$bytes = PdfTemplates::render('invoice', $data);

$data is an array or a raw JSON string. A list of objects ([{…}, {…}]) renders several documents into one PDF. make() renders once, so you can call save() and then download() on the same object.

Mail attachments

public function attachments(): array
{
    return [PdfTemplates::make('invoice', $this->order->toPdfData())->filename('invoice')->attachment()];
}

Let users pick a template

<x-pdf-templates::select name="pdf_template" :value="old('pdf_template', $order->pdf_template)" placeholder="—" class="form-select" />

PdfTemplates::options();        // ['invoice' => 'Invoice', ...]  active templates
PdfTemplates::options('html');  // only one mode

What data does a template expect?

PdfTemplates::fields('invoice');
// HTML:    ['title' => 'value', 'items' => 'list', 'items.*.name' => 'value', 'paid' => 'condition']
// WYSIWYG: ['client_name' => 'text', 'items' => 'table', 'payment_link' => 'qrcode']

The same list is shown on each template's test page, and by php artisan pdf-templates:render invoice --fields.

HTTP API

Set a key in .env. You can generate one with php -r "echo bin2hex(random_bytes(32));".

PDF_TEMPLATES_API_KEY=your-long-random-key

curl -X POST https://your-app.test/api/pdf-templates/invoice \
  -H "X-API-KEY: $PDF_TEMPLATES_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data @data.json -o invoice.pdf

• Request body: the JSON data.
• Response: application/pdf. Optional query parameters: ?download=1 and ?filename=name.
• Errors come back as JSON:

The API is stateless: no session and no CSRF.

Template syntax (HTML mode)

Templates can't run PHP. dompdf runs with remote resources disabled, so images must be data: URIs or files under public/; same-host URLs are mapped to local files. Fonts: DejaVu Sans by default, and more TTF fonts can be added in html.fonts.

WYSIWYG data

Each designer field has a name, which is its key in the JSON. Values are strings, except:

• table: [["a","b"],["c","d"]]
• list: ["x","y"]
• multi-variable text: {"var":"value"}
• image: data:image/png;base64,…

The Page… menu in the designer resizes the page and scales every field to the new size.

Rendering WYSIWYG on the server

pdfme only runs in JavaScript, so server-side generation goes through the bundled Node renderer:

php artisan pdf-templates:renderer      # installs npm deps on first run, listens on 127.0.0.1:3311

PDFME_RENDERER_URL=http://127.0.0.1:3311
PDFME_RENDERER_TOKEN=optional-shared-secret

In production, run it under supervisor or systemd. You can also copy vendor/anghelutav/laravel-pdf-templates/renderer anywhere and run npm install && npm start (env: HOST, PORT, PDFME_RENDERER_TOKEN).

Templates in git: export and import

Templates live in the database. To keep them in version control and ship them with deploys:

php artisan pdf-templates:export                  # database/pdf-templates/<slug>/…
php artisan pdf-templates:import                  # on deploy, keeps templates that already exist
php artisan pdf-templates:import --force          # overwrite

Commands

Configuration

config/pdf-templates.php:

To publish the views or translations (en, ro): php artisan vendor:publish --tag=pdf-templates-views or --tag=pdf-templates-lang.

Testing

composer test

License

MIT