How to use PDFlib products with PHP

Last change: February 17, 2011 Latest PDFlib version covered in this document: 8.0.2 Latest version of this document available at: www.pdflib.com/developer/technical-documentation Contact: PDFlib GmbH Franziska-Bilek-Weg 9 80339 Mnchen, Germany phone +49 89 452 33 84-0 [email protected] www.pdflib.com

1 Scope of this Document

This document explains various possibilities for successfully deploying PDFlib products as a PHP extension. The generic term PDFlib is used to designate one of the following distinct products: > The commercial PDFlib product > PDFlib+PDI, a commercial superset of PDFlib which also contains the PDF Import Library (PDI) > PDFlib Personalization Server (PPS), a superset of PDFlib+PDI with advanced Block filling features for personalizing PDF documents. Most of the PDFlib information applies to other PDFlib GmbH products analogously. Notes for the following products are included where applicable: > PDFlib TET (Text Extraction Toolkit) > PDFlib PLOP (Linearization, Optimization, Protection) and PLOP DS (Digital Signature) > PDFlib pCOS (PDF Information Retrieval Tool) Note This document does not apply to PDFlib Lite, the open-source subset of PDFlib 7. The methods for deploying any of these products as a PHP extension are the same in all cases. Multiple versions of these products cannot be deployed at the same time. Different products can coexist within one PHP installation, however. Note that the evaluation versions of commercial PDFlib products will be fully functional, but will display a demo stamp across all generated PDF pages unless a valid license key is applied. This document applies to the following software versions: > PDFlib 8.0.2 and PDFlib 7.0.5 > TET 4.0, PLOP and PLOP DS 4.1, pCOS 3.0 > PHP 5.1.x, 5.2.x, and 5.3.x Where applicable, version-specific information is provided separately.

Chapter 1: Scope of this Document

2 Supported Platforms
Loadable PHP extension modules implemented as DSOs (dynamic shared objects, also called dynamic link library DLL) are the recommended method of using PDFlib with PHP. PHP supports dynamic loading of extensions from DSOs on the following platforms (only platforms supported by PDFlib GmbH are mentioned here): > Microsoft Windows > Mac OS X 10.6 (see Section 2.2, Platforms where PHP does not reliably support DSOs for older versions) > Linux on x86 and ia64 > Linux on zSeries > FreeBSD 6/7 on x86 > Sun Solaris 10 on x86 and Sparc > HP-UX 11 > AIX 5/6 32-bit (the AIX binary can also be used on IBM i5/iSeries) > IBM i5/iSeries (see Section 6.4, Installing and Using the PDFlib DSO on i5/iSeries) The PDFlib 8.0.2 distribution packages shipped by PDFlib GmbH contain PDFlib DSOs for a number of PHP versions. These are grouped into several directories as follows (not all PHP versions are supported on all platforms, though): > bind/php/php-510 for PHP 5.1.0 5.1.6 > bind/php/php-520 for PHP 5.2.0 5.2.17 > bind/php/php-530 for PHP 5.3.0 5.3.5 Depending on the compatibility properties of the PHP distribution PDFlib may also work with newer versions of PHP, but we have only tested the combinations above. Using commercial PDFlib packages with PHP on platforms with DSO support. PDFlib GmbH makes available packages with precompiled binary PDFlib DSOs for several platforms and PHP versions. If such a package is available for your combination of platform and PHP proceed with Section 6, Deploying the PDFlib DSO.

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3 Required Skill Levels

Making PDFlib work with PHP requires various skill levels depending on your operating system platform. We will classify tasks according to the following skill sets: > A PHP Web programmer knows how to write code for PHP, but doesnt have experience with other languages or general system administration tasks. The PHP programmer usually has access to other people who are responsible for performing configuration tasks. > A sysadmin feels comfortable working with PEAR and other command-line tools, happily edits php.ini and does not hesitate to restart the Web server (i.e. Apache or IIS) if required for installation or configuration purposes. Appropriate permissions (access rights) to do all this are also part of the sysadmin profile. > A C developer has access to a C development environment (header files, compiler, linker, associated system libraries) and can work with configure scripts and Makefiles or corresponding IDE features. It may help to classify yourself according to these types of developers. The remainder of this document describes tasks which require at least sysadmin or C developer skills. PHP developers without additional knowledge or assistance will not be able to perform the required steps without assistance.

Chapter 3: Required Skill Levels

4 Testing your Installation

After you installed your PDFlib product extension for PHP using any of the methods discussed in this document you may want to test your installation in order to see whether everything works as expected. The PHP info page. You can test the success of your PDFlib product installation and configuration with the following mini PHP script:
<?phpinfo()?>

If you don't find a PDF section check your log files to find the reason. If the output created by phpinfo( ) contains the line PDFlib GmbH Binary Version you are using a precompiled PDFlib DSO provided by PDFlib GmbH. If you see a line PDFlib GmbH Version you are using your own PDFlib DSO or custom PHP with a statically linked PDFlib. The version number of the PECL module which has been used to build the PDFlib extension will also be shown. The PDFlib product examples. The distribution package of your PDFlib product includes two flavors of examples which you can use to test your installation. In the bind/ php directory you can find PDFlib programming examples. To use the examples proceed as follows: > Copy the PHP samples and data files to your htdocs directory:
$ cp bind/php/*.php .../htdocs $ cp bind/data/* .../htdocs/data

> point your browser to the URLs of the examples > enjoy the generated PDFs

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5 PDFlib in Hosting Environments

You are running a site at a Web hosting provider. In this case there are various considerations (we can ignore the case where a PDFlib extension for PHP is already installed since theres nothing more to do): > Some providers do not allow custom PHP extensions; in this case you are out of luck. > With some providers you can maintain your own copy of php.ini, while others dont allow this. If you cant edit php.ini and this file contains enable_dl=Off you are out of luck. You are a Web hosting provider. As a provider you should be aware of the following: > Although PDFlib Lite source code is freely available, and many Linux and PHP distributions contain PDFlib Lite, the PDFlib Lite license does not cover free use of PDFlib Lite on a Web hosters systems. > You can install commercial PDFlib DSOs even without obtaining a license. In this situation you can install one of the precompiled PDFlib DSOs supplied by PDFlib GmbH without a license key (i.e. a demo stamp will be created). Those among your customers who wish to commercially use it can obtain a commercial license to disable the demo stamp. In other words, you can offer PDFlib without the need for obtaining a license for all of your servers. The recommended method is to install the PDFlib DSO in some globally accessible directory, and set the extension= line in php.ini appropriately. > Alternatively, if (like an increasing number of providers) you believe in PDFlib availability as a competitive advantage, you can obtain a site license which covers all your servers and customers. Individual users will no longer be required to obtain a license on their own in this case. Please contact PDFlib GmbH if you are interested in more details.

Chapter 5: PDFlib in Hosting Environments

6 Deploying the PDFlib DSO

Note In addition to the PDFlib product family, this section also applies to PDFlib TET, PDFlib PLOP, and PDFlib pCOS if you replace the string libpdf_php with libtet_php, libplop_php, or libpcos_php, respectively. Requirements: > Skill level: sysadmin > The PDFlib DSO, either built on your own or (preferably) from a binary package provided by PDFlib GmbH at www.pdflib.com/download/pdflib-family/pdflib-8 > Working PHP binary This section applies to the prebuilt DSOs distributed by PDFlib GmbH, as well as to DSOs which you have built yourself.

6.1 Installing the PDFlib DSO on Windows

The PDFlib DSOs for Windows (actually DLLs) have been tested with the binary PHP distribution which is available from www.php.net. You will find PDFlib DSOs for various versions of PHP on Windows in the uncompressed package. The PDFlib DSO in the following directory has been built for a multithreaded version of PHP:
bind/php/php-<version>/libpdf_php.dll

Starting with PHP 5.2 we also offer Windows binaries of the PDFlib PHP binding which have been built without support for thread safety. These binaries are named as follows (ZTS refers to Zend Thread Safety, a threading abstraction layer):
bind/php/php-<version>-nozts/libpdf_php.dll

Since PHP 5.3 the precompiled PHP binaries for Windows (php.exe) come in two incompatible flavors: one is compiled with Visual Studio 6, while the other is compiled with Visual Studio 2008 (also called VS9). The VS9 versions of the PDFlib PHP binding are located in directories ending with _VS9, e.g.
bind/php/php-<version>_VS9/libpdf_php.dll

For the PHP installation process please follow the documentation of your PHP distribution and copy the PDFlib DSO to the directory which is specified in the extension_dir line in php.ini. Using PDFlib with Zend Server. In order to use PDFlib with Zend Server you must use the DLL in the php-<version>-nozts_VS9 directory, and must rename libpdf_php.dll to php_ pdf.dll.

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6.2 Installing the PDFlib DSO on Unix

The PDFlib DSOs for various Unix platforms are available for different versions of PHP. You will find PDFlib DSOs in the following location of the uncompressed package:
bind/php/php-<version>/libpdf_php.so (adjust the shared library suffix if necessary)

Copy the PDFlib DSO to the directory which is specified in the extension_dir line in php.ini. The standard Unix versions of the PDFlib DSO have been built without multithread support. However, the binaries
bind/php/php-<version>mt/libpdf_php.so

which are available for some platforms, are PDFlib DSOs for use with versions of PHP which include Zend Thread Safety (ZTS) support.

6.3 Using the PDFlib DSO on Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix

Loading the PDFlib DSO in php.ini. insert one line in php.ini
extension=libpdf_php.dll

If you decide to load PDFlib every time PHP starts,

(on Windows)

or
extension=libpdf_php.so (on Unix; adjust the shared library suffix if necessary)

and restart your Web server so that the changes are recognized. Loading the PDFlib DSO explicitly in your PHP script. Without the extension line in php.ini you must include the following line in your PHP scripts:
dl("libpdf_php.dll"); (on Windows)

or
dl("libpdf_php.so"); (on Unix; adjust the shared library suffix if necessary)

In this case your php.ini must contain the following lines:

safe_mode=Off enable_dl=On

The line extension_dir is not relevant in this case. Note that for security reasons this method is no longer recommended; many Web hosters do not allow it.

Chapter 6: Deploying the PDFlib DSO

6.4 Installing and Using the PDFlib DSO on i5/iSeries

Note In order to deploy PDFlib with Zend Server for IBM i you must order a PDFlib license key for AIX, not a license for i5/iSeries. See below for more information. The third-party product Zend Server for IBM i allows you to leverage the power of the IBM i platform and the strength and flexibility of PHP to run business-critical applications on IBM i, see
www.zend.com/en/products/server/zend-server-ibm-i

The requirements for using PDFlib with PHP on i5/iSeries are as follows: > Zend Server for IBM i or Zend Server Community Edition (CE) for IBM i > PHP 5.2 or PHP 5.3 Zend Server for IBM i is based on the Portable Application Solutions Environment (PASE for i), an integrated runtime for porting selected applications from AIX systems. Since PASE is not an emulation: since i5/iSeries and AIX are based on the same POWER processor architecture, PASE uses the processor directly. There are no performance disadvantages when using PASE. More details about PASE can be found on the following IBM Web site:
www.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/servlet/ContentHandler/pw_com_porting_ibmi_pase

Perform the following steps to use PDFlib with Zend Server for IBM i: > Since Zend Server and the underlying Apache Web server are based on the PASE environment, you must use the PDFlib package for AIX, not the PDFlib package for i5/ iSeries. Download the following package from the PDFlib Web site:
PDFlib-8.0.x-AIX-php.tar.gz

> Unpack the PDFlib package for AIX, using any of the available tools for unpacking .tar.gz packages. > Locate libpdf_php.so and copy it to the extension_dir of Zend Server. The output of phpinfo( ) shows the exact location of this directory. > Rename the new copy of libpdf_php.so to php_pdf.so to match the naming conventions used in Zend Server. Add the following line to your php.ini (again, the exact location of this directory is shown in the phpinfo( ) output):
extension=php_pdf.so

> As an alternative to the previous step you can also load the PDFlib DSO directly from your script without configuring it in php.ini (note that for security reasons this method is no longer recommended):
dl("php_pdf.so");

In this case your php.ini must contain the following lines:

safe_mode=Off enable_dl=On

Now you can create PDF from PHP scripts on i5/iSeries.

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6.5 Common Problems with PDFlib DSOs

Older version of PDFlib built into the PHP binary. PDFlib Lite support must not already have been compiled into your PHP version. If your PHP already includes PDFlib Lite support (this is the case for versions of PHP distributed with some Linux distributions) but you need a newer PDFlib version you must first obtain a PHP binary without builtin PDFlib support (either by locating the appropriate binary, or rebuilding it yourself). Maintainers of Linux and PHP distributions should include PDFlib support for PHP as DSO because this facilitates updates. Binary characteristics of PHP and PDFlib DSO must match. Several properties of your PHP binary must match those of the PDFlib DSO. These properties are determined when building PHP, and cannot be changed afterwards. The precompiled DSOs for PDFlib have been built as follows: > non-debug version > thread-safety as described in Section 6.1, Installing the PDFlib DSO on Windows and Section 6.2, Installing the PDFlib DSO on Unix > the API version: choose the matching version from bind/php/php-<version> If you see an error message similar to the following when trying to load the PDFlib DSO, your PHP build number does not match that of the PDFlib module:
Warning: pdf: Unable to initialize module Module compiled with debug=0, thread-safety=0 module API=20020429 PHP compiled with debug=0, thread-safety=1 module API=20020429

All of these options must match. PHP on Mac OS X 10.5 and earlier. The PDFlib DSOs works fine with the native PHP version bundled with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). However, Apples PHP version which is bundled with Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 does not work with PDFlib DSOs. To use PHP with PDFlib on Mac OS X 10.5 and earlier you need third-party PHP packages such as MAMP or XAMPP for Mac. Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) suffers from an additional restriction: as described in developer.apple.com/releasenotes/CoreFoundation/CoreFoundation.html it is no longer possible to use CoreFoundation functions after a call to fork( ) without exec( ). However, CoreFoundation functions are required for PDFlibs host font feature, and the critical sequence above is used in the combination of Apache and PHP. This may trigger the following error message in the Apache log (and may even crash the Apache process):
The process has forked and you cannot use this CoreFoundation functionality safely. You MUST exec(). Break on _THE_PROCESS_HAS_FORKED_AND_YOU_CANNOT_USE_THIS_COREFOUNDATION_ FUNCTIONALITY___YOU_MUST_EXEC__() to debug.

In order to work around this problem you can run PHP as a CGI on Apache, or disable the host font feature in PDFlib using the following call:
PDF_set_parameter($p, "debug", "h");

Chapter 6: Deploying the PDFlib DSO

PDFlib with XAMPP or MAMP on Mac OS X 10.6 and older. If you add the PDFlib PHP extension to your php.ini on a Mac OS X Intel machine which has XAMPP installed, the following error message appears:
dyld: NSLinkModule() error dyld: Symbol not found: __cg_jpeg_resync_to_restart Referenced from: /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/ Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/ImageIO Expected in: /Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/lib/libjpeg.62.dylib

The PDFlib extension is linked against the ApplicationServices Framework, and XAMPP changes the DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH. This combination confuses the dynamic link editor. We detected that commenting out DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH in xamppfiles/bin/envvars cures this problem. If you have MAMP installed, the following error message may appear in the log file:
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/Applications/MAMP/bin/php5.3/ lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/libpdf_php.so' - dlopen(/Applications/MAMP/ bin/php5.3/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/libpdf_php.so, 9): Symbol not found: __cg_jpeg_resync_to_restart Referenced from: /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/ Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libTIFF.dylib Expected in: /Applications/MAMP/Library/lib/libjpeg.8.dylib in /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/ ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libTIFF.dylib in Unknown on line 0

To cure the problem with MAMP comment out DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH in Library/bin/ envvars. PDFlib with XAMPP on Linux. Some versions of system libraries bundled with the XAMPP package may trigger the following error message:
Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/opt/lampp/htdocs/test/pdf/pdflib/ bind/php/php-530/libpdf_php.so' - /opt/lampp/lib/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6) in Unknown on line 0

In this case you must disable the following two lines in the file bin/envvars, e.g. by adding a comment character at the start of the line:
#binbuild LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/lampp/lib/:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" #binbuild export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

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7 Additional Web Links

> The public PDFlib mailing list for general discussion: tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/pdflib > PDFlib support for commercial licensees: [email protected] > General information on installing PHP: www.php.net/install > PEAR and PECL support: pear.php.net/support.php and pecl.php.net/support.php > Instructions on getting the latest version of PEAR: pear.php.net/manual/en/installation.getting.php > Comprehensive list of PHP-related links: www.php.net/links.php

Chapter 7: Additional Web Links

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