How to easily generate PDF invoices with Laravel

To generate PDF with Laravel there are very powerful solutions, among which the following can be mentioned:

• Browsershot de Spatie: It uses Chrome to render content, therefore, it supports HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript without major limitations.
• Laravel Snappy: This package works with the wkhtmltopdf and wkhtmltoimage (Web kit HTML to PDF/Image) binaries, but has limitations with EcmaScript 6.

These options are very powerful when you manage your server, for example, VPS or AWS EC2, but for shared hosting it is a problem, since the execution of binaries is usually blocked for security reasons.

Given the above scenario, we have a viable option, this is Laravel DOMPDF, and an implementation that facilitates a lot of work, called Laravel Invoices, a package on which I will base this article.

Features

Laravel Invoices offers us the features we need the most, the following stand out:

• Discounts
• Taxes
• Shipping value
• Invoice due date
• Currencies formats
• Custom consecutive or identifier
• Multi-language
• Custom templates

If you find it interesting, please continue reading this article, because I am going to make use of this valuable package. To install, we can review the README documentation from the GitHub repository:

composer require laraveldaily/laravel-invoices

php artisan invoices:install

I am not going to delve into the installation process, as the instructions are very simple. As a recommendation, copy the default template so you can make customizations.

# Default template
resources/views/vendor/invoices/templates/default.blade.php

# Custom template
resources/views/vendor/invoices/templates/invoice.blade.php

Another important thing is that you review the available methods in the documentation, it will give you complete information about the API of the Invoice class of the package.

Example scenario

Normally, you have two basic models, invoices (Invoice) and products (Product), with an intermediate or pivot table with the names of the models in alphabetical order invoice_product, therefore, it is a many-to-many relationship. Other models such as the customer (Customer), are added to complement the example.

In invoice controller (InvoiceController), we can have export method:

<?php

use App\Models\Invoice;
use LaravelDaily\Invoices\Invoice as InvoiceDocument;
use LaravelDaily\Invoices\Classes\Party;
use LaravelDaily\Invoices\Classes\InvoiceItem;

...

/** 
* Model bindings
* 
* @param Invoice $invoice
* @return \Illuminate\Http\Response
*/
public function export(Invoice $invoice){
    $invoice->load([
        'customer' => function ($query) {
            $query->select(['id', 'business_name', 'code', 'address', 'phone']); 
        },
        'products' => function ($query) {
             $query->select(['id', 'description', 'price', 'unit'])
                 ->withPivot(['quantity', 'discount']);
        },
    ]);

    $seller = new Party([
        'name' => 'My company',
        'code' => '123 318 9486',
        'custom_fields' => [
            'address' => 'Colombia',
            'phone' => '123 123 2233',
        ],
    ]);

    $customer = new Party([
        'name' => $invoice->customer->business_name,
        'code' => $invoice->customer->code,
        'address' => $invoice->customer->address,
        'phone' => $invoice->customer->phone,
    ]);

    $items = collect();

    $invoice->products->each(function ($product) use (&$items) {
        $item = new InvoiceItem();
        $item->title($product->description)
            ->pricePerUnit($product->price)
            ->quantity($product->pivot->quantity)
            ->discount($product->pivot->quantity) // Opcional: ->discountByPercent(9)
            ->units($product->unit);

        $items->push($item);
    });

    $notes = [
        'Invoice note # 1',
        'Invoice note # 2',
    ];

    $notes = implode("<br>", $notes);

    $invoiceDocument = InvoiceDocument::make('receipt')
        ->series($invoice->prefix)
        ->sequence($invoice->number)
        ->serialNumberFormat('{SERIES}-{SEQUENCE}')
        ->seller($seller)
        ->buyer($customer)
        ->date($invoice->created_at)
        ->dateFormat('m/d/Y')
        ->payUntilDays($invoice->due_days)
        ->currencySymbol('$') ->currencyCode('USD')
        ->currencyFormat('{SYMBOL} {VALUE}')
        ->currencyThousandsSeparator('.')
        ->currencyDecimalPoint(',')
        ->filename($invoice->number)
        ->addItems($items->toArray())
        ->notes($notes)
        ->logo(public_path('vendor/invoices/sample-logo.png'))
        ->template('invoice'); // Plantilla personalizada

    return $invoiceDocument->stream();
}

So, we have the possibility of customizing our invoices and export to PDF easily.

Don't forget that sharing makes us grow, and if you liked this solution, you can go to GitHub and thank with a star.

Thank you.

The image for this article was taken from Freepik.com.