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

• v2.0.0 Release
• v2.0.0 Changelog
• v2.1.0 Changelog
• Upgrade Guide
• Documentation