Choosing a PDF generator for PHP scripts

[jhsachs]

I need a PDF generator to integrate with my client's web site. I'm looking for advice from people who have used one or more of these. What is reliable, compatible, easy to work with? What isn't?

 

We need to generate a fairly large number of documents (one per customer transaction), save them on the server, and email them to customers. Each one will be a single page long, with some simple text superimposed on an image. We'd appreciate a tool that can do a good job with longer and more complex documents, but that's an "other things being equal" consideration.

 

We strongly prefer a tool that doesn't require any special extensions or other software. We're hosting on a shared server, and it's hard to justify going to a dedicated server in order to install one component.

 

It needs to run in a Linux, Windows, or Mac environment. (I think this will be an automatic result of running without special extensions, but let's have no unpleasant surprises.)

 

The cost should be low to moderate. We need to install the generator on at least three servers (development, staging, and production), and we can't justify spending thousands of dollars.

 

So far I've found two suitable products: FPDF and TCPDF. From the literature, I don't see a lot to choose between them. If you have experience with either or both, please comment.

 

If you know of another product that may be suitable for us, please mention it too.

 

 

[gristoi]

FPDF is slightly outdated, there is another called MPDF which lets you convert html into prf. I have found this quite useful in the past. Hope it helps