README

A Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) driver for spatie/laravel-pdf. Renders PDFs by communicating directly with chrome-headless-shell over CDP pipes — no Node.js, no Puppeteer, no Docker, no external services.

Requirements

PHP 8.2+
Laravel 11+
spatie/laravel-pdf ^2.0

Installation

Install the package via Composer:

composer require breuer/laravel-pdf-chrome-driver

Download the headless Chrome binary:

php artisan pdf-chrome-driver:install

Set the driver in your config/laravel-pdf.php:

'driver' => 'chrome',

Or via your .env file:

LARAVEL_PDF_DRIVER=chrome

That's it. All spatie/laravel-pdf functionality now uses Chrome CDP under the hood.

Usage

This package is a driver for spatie/laravel-pdf — use spatie's API as documented in their README:

use Spatie\LaravelPdf\Facades\Pdf;

Route::get('/pdf', function () {
    return Pdf::view('invoice', ['order' => $order]);
});

Configuration

Publish the config file to customize Chrome binary path or timeout:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag="pdf-chrome-driver-config"

return [
    'path' => env('PDF_CHROME_DRIVER_CHROME_PATH'),
    'timeout' => env('PDF_CHROME_DRIVER_TIMEOUT', 10),
];

Linux ARM64

Pre-built Chrome binaries are not available for Linux ARM64. Install Chromium via your package manager and point to it:

PDF_CHROME_DRIVER_CHROME_PATH=/usr/bin/chromium

How it works

Unlike other drivers that shell out to Node.js or rely on external services, this driver:

Launches chrome-headless-shell with --remote-debugging-pipe
Communicates over CDP via file descriptors (fd 3/4) — no WebSocket, no port allocation
Injects HTML via Page.setDocumentContent — no temp files
Generates PDF via Page.printToPDF

Each request gets an isolated Chrome process with its own temp directory, cleaned up automatically.

License

This package is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT License. Please see the License File for more information.

breuer / laravel-pdf-chrome-driver

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