Getting Started with Folio 2.0

Folio 2.0 is a pure-PHP PDF generation system. You describe documents as structured data — pages, columns, rows, text, headings and tables — and Folio measures, lays out, paginates and renders them into a PDF file.

Installation

Folio 2.0 requires PHP 8.3 or newer and has no runtime dependencies beyond Composer:

composer require mohammadraufzahed/folio

If you want to run the test suite, install the development dependencies as well:

composer install --dev

Your first template

Create a file called invoice.folio:

prop company = "Acme Inc."
prop amount = ""

page(background="#ffffff") {
    column(width="100%", padding=48, gap=24) {
        heading(color="#0f172a", fontSize=24) "Invoice"
        text "From: {company}"
        text "Total: {amount}"
    }
}

This template declares two props (company and amount) and renders a single page with a heading and two paragraphs.

Render from PHP

Use the TemplateEngine to compile and render the template:

<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';

use Folio\Pdf\Template\TemplateEngine;

$engine = new TemplateEngine();
$pdf = $engine
    ->enableFolio2Syntax(__DIR__ . '/templates')
    ->renderFile('invoice.folio', [
        'company' => 'Acme Inc.',
        'amount'  => '$1,250.00',
    ]);

file_put_contents('invoice.pdf', $pdf);

enableFolio2Syntax() turns on the v2 preprocessor, which supports @use, prop, string interpolation, if and foreach.

Your first PHP-only document

You can also build documents directly in PHP without a template:

<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';

use Folio\Pdf\Document\Pdf;
use Folio\Pdf\Nodes\Column;
use Folio\Pdf\Nodes\Page;
use Folio\Pdf\Nodes\Text;
use Folio\Pdf\Styling\Style;

$pdf = Pdf::make()->page(
    Page::a4()->withContent(
        Column::make(
            Style::make()->padding(48.0)->gap(24.0)->width('100%'),
            [
                Text::make('Hello, Folio!'),
            ]
        )
    )
);

file_put_contents('hello.pdf', $pdf->toString());

Both paths produce the same PDF bytes through the LayoutEngine and Pdf1_7Renderer.

Next steps

• Template language reference
• Styling guide
• CLI tools
• Examples
• Architecture overview