Using mPDF with CodeIgniter 3

Last updated on November 23, 2022

In my previous post, I wrote a tutorial on Generating a PDF in Codeigniter using mPDF, and in that tutorial, I covered mPDF library manual installation steps, without the composer. So in this post, I would like to use CodeIgniter 3 and composer to install and load the mPDF library.

Here are the steps to generate PDF in the CodeIgniter 3 application with mPDF:

Step 1: Download and install CodeIgniter.

Step 2: Run the below composer command to download the mPDF library from your project folder. It will create a new folder called “vendor” and it will download the “mPDF” library into it.

$ composer require mpdf/mpdf

Here is the directory structure after installing mPDF

Step 3: Open application/config/config.php file and set your vendor directory path

$config['composer_autoload'] = 'vendor/autoload.php';

Step 4: Use the mPDF library inside your controller, here is the sample:

<?php
defined('BASEPATH') OR exit('No direct script access allowed');
 
class Welcome extends CI_Controller {
 
 public function index()
 {
      $mpdf = new \Mpdf\Mpdf();
      $html = $this->load->view('html_to_pdf',[],true);
      $mpdf->WriteHTML($html);
      $mpdf->Output(); // opens in browser
      //$mpdf->Output('arjun.pdf','D'); // it downloads the file into the user system, with give name
 }
 
}

Step 5: Create a view called html_to_pdf.php file inside in your view folder with the below HTML

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
 <meta charset="utf-8">
 <title>Welcome to CodeIgniter</title>
</head>
<body>
 
<div id="container">
 <h1>Welcome to CodeIgniter!</h1>
 
 <div id="body">
 <p>The page you are looking at is being generated dynamically by CodeIgniter.</p>
 
 <p>If you would like to edit this page you'll find it located at:</p>
application/views/welcome_message.php
 <p>The corresponding controller for this page is found at:</p>
application/controllers/Welcome.php
 <p>If you are exploring CodeIgniter for the very first time, you should start by reading the <a href="user_guide/">User Guide</a>.</p>
 </div>
 
</div>
 
</body>
</html>

Step 6: That’s it. Very quick and simple. Now access your CodeIgniter application, and you should get similar output:

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