Driver-Based Architecture in Spatie's Laravel PDF v2

Spatie's laravel-pdf v2 introduces a driver-based architecture for PDF generation, letting you choose between Browsershot, Cloudflare Browser Rendering, DomPdf, and — as of v2.1.0 — Gotenberg. This release also adds queued PDF generation, PDF metadata support, runtime driver switching, and custom driver support.

Driver-based architecture with Browsershot, Cloudflare, and DomPdf drivers
Gotenberg driver added in v2.1.0
Queued PDF generation
PDF metadata support (title, author, subject, keywords, creator, creation date)
Runtime driver switching and custom drivers

What's New

Driver-Based Architecture

The biggest change in v2 is the move to a driver-based system. Instead of being locked into Browsershot, you can now choose the PDF backend that fits your infrastructure:

Browsershot — Chromium-based rendering via Puppeteer (remains the default)
Cloudflare — Generate PDFs using Cloudflare's Browser Rendering API
DomPdf — Pure PHP rendering with no external binary required

Set your default driver in the config file, or switch at runtime:

use Spatie\LaravelPdf\Facades\Pdf;
 
Pdf::view('pdfs.invoice', ['invoice' => $invoice])
    ->driver('dompdf')
    ->format('a4')
    ->save('invoice.pdf');

You can also build custom drivers for backends the package doesn't ship with.

Gotenberg Driver (v2.1.0)

The day after v2's release, v2.1.0 added a built-in Gotenberg driver. Gotenberg is a Docker-based API for HTML-to-PDF conversion using headless Chromium. The driver sends HTML as multipart form-data to Gotenberg's conversion endpoint and supports all standard PDF options: paper size, margins, orientation, scale, page ranges, headers, and footers. It uses Laravel's built-in Http facade, so no additional Composer dependencies are required.

PR: #302

Queued PDF Generation

PDF generation can now be offloaded to a queue with saveQueued(). You can chain a callback to run after the PDF is saved — for example, sending an email with the generated file:

use Spatie\LaravelPdf\Facades\Pdf;
 
Pdf::view('pdfs.invoice', ['invoice' => $invoice])
    ->format('a4')
    ->saveQueued('invoice.pdf')
    ->then(fn (string $path, ?string $diskName) =>
        Mail::to($user)->send(new InvoiceMail($path))
    );

The method also accepts optional $connection and $queue parameters.

PDF Metadata

v2 adds a meta() method for setting PDF document metadata:

use Spatie\LaravelPdf\Facades\Pdf;
 
Pdf::view('pdfs.invoice', ['invoice' => $invoice])
    ->meta(
        title: 'Invoice #1234',
        author: 'Acme Corp',
        subject: 'Monthly Invoice',
        keywords: 'invoice, billing',
        creator: 'Laravel PDF',
        creationDate: now(),
    )
    ->save('invoice.pdf');

Check the documentation for more details on formatting PDFs.

Upgrade Notes

This is a major release with breaking changes:

spatie/browsershot must now be explicitly required via Composer if you use the Browsershot driver
getBrowsershot() has been removed — use withBrowsershot() instead
The config file structure has changed (new driver key) — republish your config
Laravel 10 support has been dropped

References