Merge PDFs with the Zend Framework
28 Aug 2013I’ve used a number of PHP libraries to handle creation of PDFs but only recently needed to merge existing PDF files via PHP.
There are a couple of existing libraries to handle this, the previously popular pdfmerger script at codeplex has become unmaintained. Currently using the Zend Framework is the best way to merge PDFs.
Using the PDF component of the Zend Framework is suprisingly easy, just load in the PDFs, clone the pages and save as a new PDF (or display in the browser).
Here’s the code to merge 2 existing PDFs. Its easy enough to add more PDFs or dynamic content using Zend PDF or tcpdf
Note: This is using Zend Framework version 1
PDF merge with Zend - pdf_merge_zend.pph
<?php
$path ="lib/";
set_include_path(get_include_path() . PATH_SEPARATOR . $path);
require_once 'lib/Zend/Pdf.php';
// LOAD PDF DOCUMENTS
$pdf1 = Zend_Pdf::load('first.pdf');
$pdf2 = Zend_Pdf::load('second.pdf');
// WE WILL MERGE OUR TWO PDF FILES INTO A NEW ZEND_PDF OBJECT
$pdfMerged = new Zend_Pdf();
// ADD ALL PAGES FROM THE FIRST PDF TO OUR NEW DOCUMENT
foreach($pdf1->pages as $page){
$clonedPage = clone $page;
$pdfMerged->pages[] = $clonedPage;
}
// ADD ALL PAGES FROM THE SECOND PDF TO OUR NEW DOCUMENT
foreach($pdf2->pages as $page){
$clonedPage = clone $page;
$pdfMerged->pages[] = $clonedPage;
}
unset($clonedPage);
// SEND THE MERGED PDF DOCUMENT TO BROWSER
//header('Content-type: application/pdf');
//echo $pdfMerged->render();
//save to a file
$pdfMerged->save('out/3.pdf');
?>
