Writing/Drawing over a PDF template document in PHP

Question

I'd like to be able to write/overlay text over an existing pdf document using PHP. What I am hoping to do is have a pdf document that can act as a template, and fill in the gaps by opening the template doc, overlaying the relevant text, and serving the result as a new document. The template document is a single page so page merging/manipulation is not necessary.

Are there any free libraries that can do this? Anywhere I should look? Most searches I've done seem to deal with merging documents/adding pages, instead of overlaying content over an existing page.

Thanks.

*EDIT: Here is what I did: 1. Download FPDF 2. Download FPDI + FPDF_TPL from

http://www.setasign.de/products/pdf-php-solutions/fpdi/downloads/

Here is some sample code for any future wanderers (adapted from the samples at www.setasign.de):

<?php  include('fpdf.php');  include('fpdi.php');   // initiate FPDI  $pdf =& new FPDI();  // add a page  $pdf->AddPage();  // set the sourcefile  $pdf->setSourceFile('templatedoc.pdf');  // import page 1  $tplIdx = $pdf->importPage(1);  // use the imported page as the template  $pdf->useTemplate($tplIdx, 0, 0);   // now write some text above the imported page  $pdf->SetFont('Arial');  $pdf->SetTextColor(255,0,0);  $pdf->SetXY(25, 25);  $pdf->Write(0, "This is just a simple text");   $pdf->Output('newpdf.pdf', 'D');  ?> 

Answer 1

Have a look at the FPDI Library an add on to FPDF for template annotation.

It can also bolt-on to TCPDF, another popular PHP PDF library. An existing PDF is used as the base of a page, instead of a blank, after that the procedures are the same as regular PDF creation.

Answer 2

You probably want to use PDF Forms for what you want to do. To fill these babies you could use the FDF method described here: Using HTML forms to fill in PDF fields with PHP and FDF.
There is actually another nice SO post about PDF form filling here: Filling PDF Forms with PHP.