pandoc-php/pandoc

A native PHP 8.4 port of the Pandoc document converter.

4.2.0 2026-06-22 11:33 UTC

Requires

• php: >=8.4

Requires (Dev)

• phpunit/phpunit: ^11.0

GPL-2.0-or-later

• John MacFarlane

• excel
• xlsx
• csv
• markdown
• locale
• html
• Bibliography
• docx
• converter
• latex
• ast
• pandoc
• bibtex
• pptx
• PowerPoint
• jupyter

Published on Packagist.org on 2026-06-22 11:33 UTC

README

A native PHP 8.4 port of the Pandoc document converter. This library converts documents between formats (Word .docx, Excel .xlsx, PowerPoint .pptx, HTML .html, Markdown .md, Jupyter .ipynb, BibTeX .bib → LaTeX) without requiring the system-level Pandoc binary.

Features

• Native PHP 8.4: Uses readonly classes, Enums, and property hooks.
• AST-Centric Architecture: Mirrors Pandoc's Abstract Syntax Tree for robust conversions.
• Modular Reader System: Factory pattern and ReaderInterface for easy format expansion.
• Deep Docx Parsing: Paragraphs, headers, tables, lists, images, bold/italic/underline/strikeout, superscript/subscript, text and background colors, hyperlinks (external \href/\url, internal \hyperref), footnotes and endnotes (\footnote), automatic run-merging (consecutive runs with identical styling are collapsed into one command), and black-color suppression (spurious \textcolor[HTML]{000000} commands are dropped).
• Excel (XLSX): All sheets as booktabs tables, shared strings, bold/italic, embedded images, chart extraction (JSON metadata + CSV data for Chart.js), per-sheet CSV export with locale-aware separators, and a metadata.json summary of document locale.
• PowerPoint (PPTX): Each slide becomes a slide environment, all slides wrapped in a slider environment. Images, embedded videos (\begin{video}...\end{video}), and audio (\begin{audio}...\end{audio}) extracted to MediaBag.
• LaTeX Generation: Standalone documents or body fragments.
• Automatic ZIP Bundling: When a document contains images or chart data, output is a .zip with the .tex and all media files in the same directory. Plain .tex otherwise.
• Full UTF-8: End-to-end UTF-8, supporting CJK, Cyrillic, Arabic, Thai, and all Latin-extended scripts.
• No External Dependencies: Pure PHP 8.4+.

Installation

Requires PHP 8.4 or higher.

composer require pandoc-php/pandoc

Basic Usage

Converting a Word Document to LaTeX

use Pandoc\Reader\DocxReader;
use Pandoc\Writer\LatexWriter;

$reader = new DocxReader();
$writer = new LatexWriter();

$doc   = $reader->read('document.docx');
$latex = $writer->write($doc, standalone: true);

file_put_contents('document.tex', $latex);

Converting Markdown to a LaTeX Fragment

use Pandoc\Reader\MarkdownReader;
use Pandoc\Writer\LatexWriter;

$reader   = new MarkdownReader();
$writer   = new LatexWriter();
$markdown = "# Hello World\nThis is a paragraph.";
$doc      = $reader->read($markdown);

// standalone: false → body only, no \documentclass preamble
$fragment = $writer->write($doc, standalone: false);

Converting HTML to LaTeX

use Pandoc\Reader\HtmlReader;
use Pandoc\Writer\LatexWriter;

$reader = new HtmlReader();
$writer = new LatexWriter();

$doc   = $reader->read("<h1>Hello</h1><p>World</p>");
$latex = $writer->write($doc);

Converting an Excel Spreadsheet to LaTeX

use Pandoc\Reader\XlsxReader;
use Pandoc\Writer\LatexWriter;

$reader = new XlsxReader();
$writer = new LatexWriter();

$doc   = $reader->read('spreadsheet.xlsx');
$latex = $writer->write($doc);

Each sheet produces a level-2 header followed by a booktabs table. If the spreadsheet contains embedded images or charts, use the ZIP output pattern below.

Note: Only .xlsx (OOXML) is supported. Legacy .xls files must be converted first (e.g. via LibreOffice).

Chart extraction: Charts are exported as two companion files added to the MediaBag:

chart1.json — Chart.js-ready metadata:

{
  "type": "bar",
  "title": "Sales by Quarter",
  "dataFile": "chart1.csv",
  "options": {
    "indexAxis": "x",
    "scales": {
      "x": { "title": { "display": true, "text": "Quarter" }, "stacked": false },
      "y": { "title": { "display": true, "text": "Revenue" }, "stacked": false }
    }
  },
  "series": [
    { "label": "Product A" },
    { "label": "Product B" }
  ]
}

chart1.csv — the data (categories + one column per series):

Category,Product A,Product B
Q1,120,85
Q2,135,90
Q3,128,95
Q4,145,110

A comment marker is inserted in the LaTeX at the chart's position:

% [pandoc-chart: chart1.json]

Your app reads the marker → loads the JSON → finds dataFile → loads the CSV → renders with Chart.js.

Per-sheet CSV export: Each worksheet is also exported as a standalone CSV file (e.g. sheet-Sales.csv) added to the MediaBag. Trailing empty rows and columns are stripped automatically.

Locale detection: The reader inspects docProps/core.xml for a <dc:language> tag and selects separators accordingly:

Language group	Decimal sep.	Thousands sep.	Column delim.
en, ja, zh, pt-BR, …	.	,	,
fr, de, it, es, nl, pl, ru, …	,	.	;

When no language tag is present the file falls back to en-US conventions.

metadata.json: Always added to the MediaBag alongside the CSVs:

{
    "language": "fr-FR",
    "decimalSeparator": ",",
    "thousandsSeparator": ".",
    "columnDelimiter": ";",
    "quoteCharacter": "\"",
    "sheets": ["Sheet1", "Sheet2"]
}

Utility script: export_xlsx_media.php converts any .xlsx file to a ZIP containing its CSVs and metadata.json:

php export_xlsx_media.php spreadsheet.xlsx output.zip

Converting a PowerPoint Presentation to LaTeX

use Pandoc\Reader\PptxReader;
use Pandoc\Writer\LatexWriter;

$reader = new PptxReader();
$writer = new LatexWriter();

$doc   = $reader->read('presentation.pptx');
$latex = $writer->write($doc, standalone: true);

Each slide is wrapped in a slide environment (with the slide title as argument), and all slides are enclosed in a slider environment:

\begin{slider}

\begin{slide}{Slide Title}
Paragraph content here.
\end{slide}

\begin{slide}{Second Slide}
More content.
\end{slide}

\end{slider}

These are custom environments — define them in your LaTeX preamble to control rendering. All images (including slide master/template graphics) are extracted into the MediaBag.

Embedded videos are exported as a video environment:

\begin{video}
\url{media1.mp4}
\type{mp4}
\end{video}

Embedded audio is exported as an audio environment:

\begin{audio}
\url{recording.mp3}
\end{audio}

All media files (images, video, audio) are included in the ZIP output alongside the .tex.

Converting BibTeX to LaTeX

use Pandoc\Reader\BibtexReader;
use Pandoc\Writer\LatexWriter;

$reader  = new BibtexReader();
$writer  = new LatexWriter();

$content = file_get_contents('references.bib');
$doc     = $reader->read($content);

// standalone: false → bibliography block only, no \documentclass preamble
$fragment = $writer->write($doc, standalone: false);
file_put_contents('references.tex', $fragment);

The output is a self-contained thebibliography block:

\begin{thebibliography}{99}

\bibitem{Smith2020}
\emph{A Great Title}, John Smith, Journal of Examples, 2020

\end{thebibliography}

• HTTP/HTTPS URLs are automatically wrapped in \url{…}.
• The title, booktitle, journal, series, and publisher fields are italicised with \emph{…}.
• BibTeX output is always produced as a fragment (standalone: false); the web interface enforces this automatically.

Converting Jupyter Notebooks to LaTeX

use Pandoc\Reader\IpynbReader;
use Pandoc\Writer\LatexWriter;

$reader = new IpynbReader();
$writer = new LatexWriter();

$json  = file_get_contents('notebook.ipynb');
$doc   = $reader->read($json);
$latex = $writer->write($doc);

Output: Plain .tex or .zip

When a document contains images, charts, or other media, you need to bundle them alongside the .tex file. The MediaBag tells you whether there are any attachments:

use Pandoc\Reader\ReaderFactory;
use Pandoc\Writer\LatexWriter;

$reader = ReaderFactory::createForExtension('docx'); // or xlsx, pptx, etc.
$doc    = $reader->read($filePath);
$latex  = (new LatexWriter())->write($doc, standalone: true);

if (!$doc->mediaBag->isEmpty()) {
    // Bundle .tex + all media into a ZIP
    $zip = new ZipArchive();
    $zip->open('output.zip', ZipArchive::CREATE | ZipArchive::OVERWRITE);
    $zip->addFromString('document.tex', $latex);
    foreach ($doc->mediaBag->getAll() as $filename => $media) {
        $zip->addFromString($filename, $media['contents']);
    }
    $zip->close();
    // → distribute output.zip
} else {
    // No media — plain .tex is sufficient
    file_put_contents('document.tex', $latex);
}

All media files (images, chart JSON/CSV) are stored at the root of the ZIP, so \includegraphics{image.png} and chart references resolve correctly when the .tex is compiled or processed from the same directory.

Web Interface

The project includes a web-based demonstration tool in web/.

1. Point your web server to the php-pandoc/web/ folder.
2. Open index.html in your browser.
3. Upload a .docx, .xlsx, .pptx, .html, .ipynb, .md, or .bib file.
4. Choose Standalone or Fragment output.
5. Download the result — a plain .tex if the document has no media, or a .zip if it does.

Supported Structures

See SUPPORTED_STRUCTURES.md for a full feature list. Highlights:

• Word: Headers (H1–H6, Title), bold/italic/underline/strikeout/color, lists, tables, images, headers & footers, hyperlinks, footnotes/endnotes, automatic run-merging.
• Excel: Multi-sheet tables, cell formatting, embedded images, Chart.js-ready chart extraction, per-sheet CSV export with locale-aware separators.
• PowerPoint: Slide titles, body text, bullet/ordered lists, images, tables, slide/slider LaTeX environments.
• HTML: Full block and inline element support.
• Jupyter: Markdown cells, code blocks, output images.
• BibTeX: Entries rendered as a thebibliography environment with \bibitem items; URLs wrapped in \url{…}, and title/journal/booktitle/series/publisher fields italicised with \emph{…}.

Development and Testing

./vendor/bin/phpunit

Credits

This project is a port of Pandoc, originally created by John MacFarlane.

License

GPL v2 or later, mirroring the original Pandoc license.