Generate PDFs in Laravel

Generate a PDF in Laravel

POST your HTML and data to /api/v1/generate with your API key, then save the PDF that comes back. Swap in your own HTML or a saved template_id and loop over records to render at scale.

<?php

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http;

$response = Http::withToken(config('services.pdfgen.key'))
    ->post('https://pdfgen.com/api/v1/generate', [
        'html' => '<h1>Invoice {{number}}</h1><p>Billed to {{client}} — total {{total}}</p>',
        'engine' => 'handlebars',
        'format' => 'A4',
        'data' => ['number' => 'INV-001', 'client' => 'Acme Corp', 'total' => '$2,400.00'],
    ]);

return response($response->body(), 200, [
    'Content-Type' => 'application/pdf',
    'Content-Disposition' => 'attachment; filename="invoice.pdf"',
]);

Convert existing HTML to PDF in Laravel

Already have finished HTML? Skip templating — render a Blade view to HTML, then convert it and send it with engine: "legacy", which tells the API your markup is final.

<?php

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http;

// Render an existing Blade view to an HTML string.
$html = view('invoice', ['number' => 'INV-001'])->render();

$response = Http::withToken(config('services.pdfgen.key'))
    ->post('https://pdfgen.com/api/v1/generate', [
        'html' => $html,
        'engine' => 'legacy',
        'format' => 'A4',
    ]);

return response($response->body(), 200, [
    'Content-Type' => 'application/pdf',
    'Content-Disposition' => 'attachment; filename="invoice.pdf"',
]);

How it works

1. 1

   Send your HTML + data

   POST an HTML template (with optional Handlebars tokens) and a data object to the API.

2. 2

   We render the PDF

   PDFgen renders it server-side — no headless browser for you to run or scale.

3. 3

   Get the PDF back

   Receive the PDF binary (or a hosted link with export_type:"url") and serve it from Laravel.

Good to know

• The Http facade ships with Laravel — nothing to install.
• Add a pdfgen entry to config/services.php and set the key in your .env.
• Use view("invoice")->render() to turn a Blade template into the html field.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need DomPDF or Snappy in Laravel?

No. Laravel’s built-in Http client plus the PDFgen API replaces the DomPDF/Snappy + wkhtmltopdf stack.

Can I render a Blade view into the PDF?

Yes — call view("name", $data)->render() to get HTML, then pass it as the html field (use engine "html" if you don’t need Handlebars).

Where do I keep the API key?

In config/services.php read from an .env variable, then access it with config("services.pdfgen.key").

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