Skip to content
phpdftk

SVG to PDF

Render SVG to PDF via the geometric painter. Output stays vector — paths, gradients, transforms map straight to PDF content-stream operators, with no intermediate raster.

Terminal window
composer require phpdftk/svg-to-pdf

Quick example

Section titled “Quick example”
use Phpdftk\Pdf\Writer\PdfWriter;
use Phpdftk\Svg\Parser as SvgParser;
use Phpdftk\SvgToPdf\SvgRenderer;


$svg = (new SvgParser())->parse(<<<'SVG'
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="200" height="100" viewBox="0 0 200 100">
  <defs>
    <linearGradient id="g" x1="0" y1="0" x2="1" y2="0">
      <stop offset="0" stop-color="red"/>
      <stop offset="1" stop-color="blue"/>
    </linearGradient>
  </defs>
  <rect width="200" height="100" fill="url(#g)"/>
  <text x="100" y="60" text-anchor="middle" font-family="serif" font-size="24" fill="white">Hello</text>
</svg>
SVG);


$writer = new PdfWriter();
$page = $writer->addPage(595.0, 842.0);
$renderer = new SvgRenderer($page, $writer);
$renderer->draw($svg, x: 100, y: 100, width: 400, height: 200);


file_put_contents('out.pdf', $writer->toBytes());

What’s in the box

Section titled “What’s in the box”

Shapes — <rect> (with corner radii), <circle>, <ellipse>, <line>, <polyline>, <polygon>, <path> with the full SVG 2 §9.3.9 d-grammar (M, m, L, l, H, h, V, v, C, c, S, s, Q, q, T, t, A, a, Z, z). Path-data parser is byte-recovery-safe — malformed segments stop cleanly without infinite-looping (closes WPT path stress tests).

Paint — fill / stroke with CSS Color 3+4 syntax, fill-opacity / stroke-opacity / opacity (group). Stroke styling: stroke-width, stroke-linecap, stroke-linejoin, stroke-miterlimit, stroke-dasharray, stroke-dashoffset. paint-order: stroke fill reordering. fill-rule: evenodd / nonzero.

Gradients — <linearGradient> and <radialGradient> with N-stop colour distributions mapped to PDF Type-3 stitching functions. gradientUnits (objectBoundingBox / userSpaceOnUse), gradientTransform, spreadMethod (pad / reflect / repeat). Cycle-safe xlink:href / href chaining — gradient inheritance through arbitrary chains without stack overflow.

Composition — <g> with transform (matrix, translate, scale, rotate, skewX, skewY, with arbitrary composition), <defs> + <symbol> + <use> template expansion with intra-document href resolution (cycle detection prevents pathological documents from looping), <clipPath> (including transformed clip paths), <mask> (soft-mask via PDF ExtGState SMask), <image> (raster sub-images via PNG / JPEG decoder).

Text — <text> and <tspan> with SVG 2 §11.6 positioning lists (x, y, dx, dy, rotate per-glyph). text-anchor (start / middle / end). font-family, font-size, font-weight, font-style, font-stretch. CSS Text Decoration 4 §6 text-shadow with multi-layer back-to-front emission. fill: none; stroke: ... outline text.

Animations — SMIL elements (<animate>, <animateMotion>, <animateTransform>, <set>) parsed and pinned at t=0 — the SVG renders as it appears at document load, with no timeline. PDF is static; this is by design.

CSS bridge — Optional phpdftk/css integration projects the SVG document’s <style> block + presentation-attribute cascade into per-element resolved values. Inline style="..." overrides authored CSS, presentation attributes lose to authored CSS (per CSS 2.1 §6.4.4).

Why phpdftk/svg-to-pdf

Section titled “Why phpdftk/svg-to-pdf”
phpdftk/svg-to-pdfDOMPDF SVGmPDF SVG
Vector output (no rasterisation)✓~ Some shapes rasterised~
N-stop gradients via PDF stitching✓✗ Two-stop only~
Path d-grammar (full SVG 2 §9.3.9)✓~ Common subset~
<use> / <defs> / <symbol>✓~~
<clipPath> / <mask>✓✗~
Text positioning (SVG 2 §11.6 lists)✓✗✗
text-shadow on <text>✓ Multi-layer✗✗
Cycle-safe gradient href chains✓✗✗
Standalone (no PDF-engine coupling)✓✗✗

Status

Section titled “Status”

SVG WPT in-scope pass: 95.40% (166 / 174). Documented at SVG WPT substrate.

Hand-authored conformance fixtures live at packages/svg-to-pdf/tests/Conformance/fixtures/ — 15 fixtures covering shapes, gradients, text, masks, opacity, transforms, clip-path, symbol/use, combined scenes. All 15 pass (ignored list empty).

Remaining gaps

Section titled “Remaining gaps”
  • Filter effects (<filter>). Parsed but defer to no-op at paint time. Lit up by Phase 4C raster compositor.
  • <foreignObject> HTML content. Parsed as opaque foreign content; rendering deferred to the html-to-pdf recursion that’s still being wired.
  • text-shadow blur radius. Parsed but not rasterised (same posture as html-to-pdf’s text-shadow — both defer blur to Phase 4C). Sharp-offset shadows render correctly.

Roadmap: docs/plans/html-and-svg.md.

☕ Support phpdftk