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Dear All,
I would like to generate pdf document via my php page which are based on mysql data? Any recommendation so far I have seen fpdf and tcpdf. Which one will be better or is there any better tool for it? Thank you.

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— short, practical guidance: pick the tool by how you want to build the PDF, not only by name. If you plan to write the layout programmatically (draw text, lines, cells in PHP) a low‑level library works best. If you prefer designing an HTML/CSS template and rendering it to PDF, use an HTML-to-PDF renderer.

Thanks to and for the pointers; below are additional, up-to-date options and the usual tradeoffs.

  • FPDF / TCPDF (classic PHP libraries): good for programmatic reports. TCPDF adds stronger UTF-8/font support and more built-in features; FPDF is lighter but needs extensions for Unicode.
  • mPDF (mPDF): solid HTML/CSS support, UTF-8, good for invoices and text-heavy documents rendered from templates.
  • dompdf (dompdf on GitHub): pure PHP HTML->PDF; easier to deploy but more limited CSS support and can be slower on large pages.
  • wkhtmltopdf (wkhtmltopdf) or headless Chrome/Puppeteer (Puppeteer): external tools that render full browser HTML/CSS (best CSS fidelity). Use when pixel-perfect layout is required.

Quick workflow and tips:

  1. Query MySQL and sanitize the data. 2) Build an HTML template and preview it in a browser first. 3) Choose renderer based on layout complexity (see above). 4) For large exports run a background job, stream or save the file instead of blocking web requests. 5) Ensure fonts/UTF-8 are configured correctly (missing fonts are the most common cause of garbled text). 6) Use absolute URLs or embedded images for reliable image rendering. 7) Check each library’s license before using it in commercial projects.

If unsure: start by rendering a representative sample (one complex invoice or report) with a couple of these tools — the practical differences (CSS support, memory use, font handling) become obvious quickly.

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