PHP & Linux PDF library integration

This guide will help you build your own PDFNet PHP wrappers by binding a free trial of the PDFNetC library to PHP. It will also show you how to run Apryse samples and integrate the Apryse SDK into PHP applications on Linux. Your free trial includes unlimited trial usage and support from solution engineers.

• Targeting PHP8

  • PHP8 with developer extensions and SWIG 4.1.0 and above.

  Please refer to PDFNet wrappers for more information

• Targeting PHP7

  • PHP7 with developer extensions and SWIG 3.0.12 OR SWIG 4.0.2 and above

• Targeting PHP5

  • PHP5 with developer extensions and SWIG 2.0.4 - 2.0.12

• CMake version ≥ 2.8

• Apryse SDK for Linux:

1. Make a directory to store the wrappers and navigate into that directory.

2. Clone the uncompiled PDFNet wrappers by executing

   git clone https://github.com/PDFTron/PDFNetWrappers # Git clone the code.

3. Navigate to PDFNetWrappers/PDFNetC and download the PDFNet C/C++ SDK into that directory. Ensure you obtain the right architecture for your PHP interpreter. For example, if your interpreter is 64bit (which this guide will assume), execute

   cd PDFNetWrappers/PDFNetC # Move to where we download PDFNet.
   wget http://www.pdftron.com/downloads/PDFNetC64.tar.gz # Download PDFNet.
   tar xzvf PDFNetC64.tar.gz # Unpack PDFNet.

4. Unpack PDFNetC64.tar.gz by tar xvzf PDFNetC64.tar.gz, then execute

   mv PDFNetC64/Headers/ . # Move PDFNet Headers/ into place.
   mv PDFNetC64/Lib/ . # Move PDFNet Lib/ into place.

   to move the PDFNet libraries in place.

   You can delete PDFNetC64.tar.gz to free up space.

   Your /PDFNetC folder should be laid out like this like this:

   PDFNetC
   ├── Headers
   ├── Lib
   ├── PDFNetC64
   └── README.txt

5. Make a build directory inside /PDFNetWrappers and navigate to it. This guide will assume the build directory is called Build.

   cd .. # Go back up /PDFNetWrappers.
   mkdir Build # Create a directory to create the Makefiles in.
   cd Build # Move to that directory.

6. Execute make followed by sudo make install. It is important when installing the php-dev directories to target the same version of PHP you're utilizing, otherwise it will pull the latest and likely cause build errors. For instance for PHP 7.4 execute sudo apt-get install php7.4-dev.

   sudo apt-get install php-dev # add php-dev for required PHP include directories
   cmake -D BUILD_PDFNetPHP=ON .. # Create the Makefiles with CMake.
   make # Build the PHP wrappers with SWIG.
   sudo make install # Copy the PHP wrappers to where the samples can find them.

   If all goes well, you should get a message which reads:

   Build files have been written to ~/PDFNetWrappers/Build

7. Please note that you may need to register PDFNetPHP.so as an extension to your PHP by adding the following line in all your php.ini files:

   extension=/full/path/to/PDFNetPHP.so

   You may also need to enable dynamic loaded extensions by updating enable_dl = On in all your php.ini files as well.

   enable_dl = On

8. Get your Apryse trial key.

You are now ready to run the samples or integrate Apryse SDK into your own application.

Run a specific sample

1. To run a test, navigate to the PHP folder in the sample, for example /Samples/AddImageTest/PHP and execute ./RunTest.sh

Run all samples

1. To run all tests, navigate to /Samples and execute:

   cd ../Samples # Move to the Samples directory.
   ./runall_php.sh # Run all PHP code samples, using the new wrappers.

   The tests will run one by one.

This section will show you how to use our SDK to create a simple Apryse "Hello World!" application. It will create a document with one blank page and save it as a linearized PDF in its running directory.

1. Navigate into your /Samples directory and make a new directory called myApp (if it does not exist already). This guide will assume your application is named myApp. For organization, create a new directory inside myApp called PHP.

2. Navigate inside that PHP directory and create a new PHP file called myApp.php. Open it with your favorite text editor and paste this into it:

   <?php
       include("../../../PDFNetC/Lib/PDFNetPHP.php");
       PDFNet::Initialize();       // PDFNet must be initialized before accessing any Apryse API
       $doc = new PDFDoc();
       $page = $doc->PageCreate(); // Start a new page
       $doc->PagePushBack($page); // Add the page to document
       $doc->Save("output.pdf", SDFDoc::e_linearized); // Save the document as a linearized PDF
       echo nl2br("Hello World!\n");
   ?>

   Run your application by executing php myApp.php. If all goes well, your console should output:

   PDFNet is running in demo mode.
   Permission: write
   Hello World!<br />

Check the output.pdf that the program output in the same directory. It should be a PDF with one blank page.

Guides Samples

Check the troubleshooting page and our PDFNetWrappers github if you run into any issues going through this document.