Introducing pdf-service: A PDF Generation Microservice with Symfony 7

January 03, 2025

Available in :

I'm excited to present pdf-service, a new open source project I just published on GitHub. It's a modern and efficient microservice for generating PDFs from HTML content, built with Symfony 7.2 and Chrome Headless.

🚀 Key Features

Based on Symfony 7.2 and FrankenPHP
Uses Chrome Headless via browserless/chrome
Hexagonal Architecture
Simple and intuitive REST API
Full Docker containerization
Next.js 15 demo application included

💡 Use Cases

Invoice generation
Report exports
Document creation from HTML templates
Web page archiving to PDF
Certificate and statement generation

🛠️ Technologies Used

Backend: Symfony 7.2, PHP 8.2+
Server: FrankenPHP
PDF: Chrome Headless (browserless)
Demo: Next.js 15 with Bun
Containerization: Docker & Docker Compose

🔧 Quick Installation

bash
1# Clone the repository
2git clone https://github.com/offroadlabs/pdf-service.git
3cd pdf-service
4
5# Copy environment file
6cp .env .env.local
7
8# Start containers
9docker compose up -d

📝 Usage Example

bash
1curl -X POST \
2  'https://localhost/api/pdf/generate' \
3  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
4  -k \
5  -o document.pdf \
6  -d '{
7    "html": "<h1>Hello World</h1>",
8    "options": {
9        "format": "A4",
10        "orientation": "portrait"
11    }
12}'

🎯 Strong Points

Performance: Optimized for fast PDF generation
Flexibility: Extensive configuration options
Modern: Using latest technology versions
Maintainable: Hexagonal architecture and automated tests
Secure: Strict input validation and error handling
Documented: Complete documentation and usage examples

🔜 Coming Soon

I plan to publish a detailed technical article soon that will explain in depth:

Project architecture
Technical choices
Used patterns
Implemented best practices
Advanced use cases
Possible optimizations

🤝 Contributing

The project is open source under MIT license. Feel free to:

⭐ Star the repository
🐛 Report bugs
💡 Suggest improvements
🔧 Contribute to the code

📚 More Information

For more details, check out:

The GitHub repository
Documentation in the README
The included demo application

A detailed technical article will follow soon to explain all aspects of the project in depth. Stay tuned! 🚀

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🔧 Quick Installation

bash

1# Clone the repository
2git clone https://github.com/offroadlabs/pdf-service.git
3cd pdf-service
4
5# Copy environment file
6cp .env .env.local
7
8# Start containers
9docker compose up -d

📝 Usage Example

bash

1curl -X POST \
2  'https://localhost/api/pdf/generate' \
3  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
4  -k \
5  -o document.pdf \
6  -d '{
7    "html": "<h1>Hello World</h1>",
8    "options": {
9        "format": "A4",
10        "orientation": "portrait"
11    }
12}'