marcelbolten/php-cairo

Cairo graphics library for PHP

dev-overhaul 2025-10-09 18:07 UTC

Requires

• php: >=8.1

MIT

• Elizabeth M Smith
• Swen Zanon
• Marcel Bolten
• Bernhard R. Fischer

• drawing
• graphics
• cairo
• 2d
• php-extension

Extension name: ext-cairo

Supports Zend Thread Safety (ZTS): ✅

Supports non-Thread Safe mode (NTS): ✅

Supported operating systems: no restrictions

README

Cairo is a 2D graphics library with support for multiple output devices. Output targets include the X Window System (via both Xlib and XCB), Quartz, Win32, image buffers, PostScript, PDF, and SVG files.

This extension provides access to Cairo functionality in PHP 8.1+ in the Cairo namespace.

Requirements

• PHP 8.1.0+
• Cairo 1.12.0+

Additional features are supported up to Cairo version 1.18.4.

Features are enabled at compile time based on the library version they are compiled against.

Documentation and information about the underlying library can be found at cairographics.org.

Installation

There are plans to make this available via PIE (PHP Installer for Extensions)

Until then, please compile and install the cairo extensions and enable it in your php.ini file.

extension=cairo.so

Compile

This extension can be compiled and tested using phpize.

The cairo extension also requires cairo development files. You can build the package manually or use your system's package manager. For example on ubuntu use:

apt-get install libcairo2-dev libfreetype6-dev fontconfig libjpeg-dev

Then you can use phpize to install the extension against your current PHP install:

phpize
./configure
make && make test && make install

If you want to use a non-standard location for your PHP use:

/path/to/phpize
./configure --with-php-config=/path/to/php-config
make && make test && make install

make install copies cairo.so to the right location, but you still need to enable the module in your php.ini file.

Codec overage reports

A coverage report is uploaded to gh-pages during every Build and Test workflow.

Requirements: lcov, gzip.

To obtain a code coverage report the extension must be compiled with additional flags:

phpize
CAIRO_COVERAGE=yes ./configure
make && make install
coverage.sh

This will run all tests and create an html report.

Examples

The examples directory holds samples of all currently working utilities for the extension.

Community

You can send comments, patches, questions here on github

Authors

Elizabeth M Smith | Swen Zanon | Marcel Bolten | Bernhard R. Fischer (JPEG-integration)

License

PHP extension binding code released under the MIT license See LICENSE

The Cairo Graphics library is is released under the LGPL

Documentation

What little documentation we currently have is in code comments and the docs directory.

We'd like to use some kind of markdown or rst format for docs, a decision isn't final yet.