PDF reports in PHP,
designed in XML
Describe the layout of your document in an XML template, bind it to your data and generate professional PDF documents with just a few lines of PHP code.
composer require alienproject/pdfreport
New: create and customize templates with AI · GitHub · Packagist
How it works
From data to PDF in three steps
Install
Run a composer command: the library and its TCPDF dependency are downloaded, installed and autoloaded.
Describe the layout
Write the XML template: page, texts, lines, images, barcodes, charts and placeholders for your data.
Generate
A few lines of PHP: choose the template, pass the data (variables or database queries) and build the PDF.
A "Hello World" page: in most cases you only choose the template and pass the data.
All the design is in the XML template. Placeholders like {HELLO_MESSAGE} are replaced with your data.
New
Create templates with AI
A PDFReport template is plain, well-documented XML. Give an AI assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini...) the online guide and one of the example templates: it can write a new template from your description or adapt an existing one, in minutes.
A new template from a description
Describe the document: page size, header, data fields, table rows, totals, barcode. The AI writes the XML template and the PHP code that binds your data.
From a document you already use
Attach a photo, a scan or a PDF of the form you use today: the AI reproduces its layout as a PDFReport template, ready to be filled with your data.
Customize an existing template
Translate it, change logo and colors, add a column, a chart or a barcode, create a version for another customer: ask for the change and get the updated XML.
How to do it
Give the context. Share the link to the online guide and attach one or two example templates similar to the document you need.
Describe the document or attach an image of it, and tell the AI which data sections and fields you have.
Test and refine. Paste the template in the editor of the reserved area and build the PDF instantly. If something is wrong, send the error message back to the AI: it reports the line and the reason of the problem.
Always review and test the generated template before using it in production.
You are helping me write an XML template for the PDFReport PHP library. Read the online guide at https://alienproject.org/help and use this template as a reference: https://alienproject.org/sample/example_07.xml Create an A4 delivery note template with: - company logo and address at the top - customer data from the section "dn" (fields: number, date, customerName, address, city) - a table of items from the section "dn_det" (fields: code, description, quantity), 20 rows per page - a Code 128 barcode with the delivery note number - the page number in the footer Use only the elements and attributes described in the guide, then write the PHP code that links the two sections to my MySQL queries.
Why PDFReport
Key advantages
Minimal PHP code
Creating a PDF document requires just a few lines of PHP code, compared to traditional methods such as using TCPDF directly.
Design separated from logic
The layout lives in the XML template, stored as a file or in a database field. Change a report, a language or a style without touching the PHP code.
Any data source
Ready-to-use data providers for MySQLi, PDO, Laravel (Eloquent) and Symfony (Doctrine), or your own custom provider (CSV, Excel, APIs...).
Charts, barcodes and more
Pie, bar, line/area, gauge and KPI charts, barcodes, images, master / detail sections with automatic page breaks and conditional printing.
Powered by TCPDF
Built on TCPDF, a well-established and reliable PHP library for PDF generation. Composer installs it automatically as a dependency.
Free and open source
Released under the GNU LGPL v3 license: use it in free and commercial projects. Cleaner code, easier to maintain over time.
Examples
Real templates, ready to download
Open the PDF, download the XML template, or log in to edit the templates online and build the report instantly. They are also a great starting point for an AI assistant.
1 - Text & shapes
Characters with different size, font, color and style, background fills, borders, lines and shapes.
2 - Sales order
Multi-page order based on master and detail data rows read from the database.
3 - Shipping label
Double shipping label with barcode and icons, based on a single data row.
4 - Energy bill
Energy bill with consumption details and ring chart (data binding via variables).
5 - Charts
KPI, gauge, pie, bar and line/area charts (data binding via variables and data providers).
6 - Sales invoice
Multi-page sales invoice (data binding via variables and data providers).
Used in production
Interventio: every printed document is a PDFReport template
Interventio is our software for managing technical interventions, from the customer's request to the invoice.
All its printed documents, from the quote to the intervention report signed by the customer and the invoice, are generated by the PDFReport engine. There are templates per company and per language (Italian, English, German, Spanish and French), each with the company's own logo.
Discover InterventioSee it at work in your sector
About us
Passion for software brought us here. We are a small group of professional software developers who created this library in our spare time, partly out of passion and partly because we believe in free software and in sharing code.
We pay for maintaining our servers, so if you find this software useful, a small donation would be a huge help.
Make a donationContact us
For any questions, log in to the members' area and contact us using the email address found on the main member's page. We will respond as soon as possible.
For security reasons (anti-spam), we do not publish email addresses on public pages.