Getting Started

Folio is a PDF generation library for PHP 8.3+. It treats PDFs as structured documents rather than rendered web pages, giving you predictable, repeatable output without the fragility of HTML-to-PDF pipelines.

Why Folio?

Most PHP PDF tools fall into one of two camps: low-level PDF writers that force you to manage every byte, or HTML-to-PDF converters that depend on headless browsers and fragile CSS. Folio sits in the middle.

You describe the document — pages, columns, rows, text, tables, and styles — and Folio measures, lays out, paginates, and renders it. The result is a clean PDF file with no browser, no DOM, and no external runtime dependencies.

What You Get

• Immutable document AST — every node is a value object. Refactor without side effects.
• Fluent PHP builder API — compose documents with readable, chained method calls.
• Declarative template language — separate design from data with .folio templates.
• Built-in layout engine — Folio calculates sizes and positions itself.
• Strongly typed styling — colors, lengths, borders, and font weights are typed, not loose strings.
• Pure PHP — composer require and you are done.

When to Use Folio

Folio fits projects that need reliable, template-driven PDFs:

• Invoices, reports, and statements
• Certificates and labels
• Multi-page legal or compliance documents
• Batch document generation where consistency matters more than pixel-perfect web fidelity

If you need a pixel-perfect reproduction of a complex web page, an HTML-to-PDF tool may still be the right choice. Folio is for teams that want a document model they can reason about, version, and test.

Next Steps

• Installation
• Quick Start
• Architecture