Laravel domPDF arabic characters generate PDF error

Question

In my project, I want to extract a certain page into a PDF file. the page is mostly in the Arabic language.

I am using barryvdh/laravel-dompdf On the first try, there were no characters showing, only question marks instead.

After digging around, I found that I should add the following CSS to my blade page:

* { 
    font-family: DejaVu Sans, sans-serif; 
    direction: rtl;
}

now the Arabic letters are showing in the PDF but their order is inverted (ABC is CBA). after another round of research, I found a solution somewhere that I should add the following into my dompdf/dompdf/src/Renderer/Text.php right before

if (strtolower($style->direction) == 'rtl') {
    preg_match_all('/./us', $text, $ar);
    $text = join('',array_reverse($ar[0]));
}

// this is added here to know where exactly i put this code
$this->_canvas->text($x, $y, $text

this works and inverts back the text as it should be, but now the letters are separated... (Arabic letters belonging to the same word are connected)

ex: البناء is showing as ‫ا ل ب ن ا ء

this is a known issue for this library that is still not resolved. one of the commentators suggested using the composer library chehivskiy/i18n-arabic‬ and use it as new \I18N_Arabic('Glyphs')

But I keep getting a class not found error. this library does not have any namespaces.

can anyone help me to either find a library that works to transform Arabic HTML to PDF, or maybe try to find a way to fix this library for it to work, or perhaps suggest a way to use a composer non-Laravel library such as chehivskiy/i18n-arabic‬ in a Laravel project.

Thank you so much.

Dominique Abou Samah Dominique Abou Samah · Accepted Answer · 2021-05-10T08:18:27

Alright so what I did, I removed the composer library chehivskiy/i18n-arabic‬ and downloaded ar-php which is kind of the same but not throught composer.

I put the extracted I18N in the app/Libraries directory that I created.

Next i changed the name of Arabic.php into I18N_Arabic.php to be the same as the class name inside of it. Note that there is another class in that file ArabicException which i put in its own file.

I also added a namespace in that file namespace App\Libraries\I18N;

Next, since i'm using the Glyph class in app\Libraries\I18N\Arabic\Glyphs.php, i also did the same thing for it, changed its file name into I18N_Arabic_Glyphs to match the classname and added namespace namespace App\Libraries\I18N\Arabic;.

Next back in my I18N_Arabic class, replace the following:

$this->myClass = '\I18N_Arabic_' . $library;
$class         = '\I18N_Arabic_' . $library;

to

$this->myClass = 'App\Libraries\I18N\Arabic\I18N_Arabic_' . $library;
$class         = 'App\Libraries\I18N\Arabic\I18N_Arabic_' . $library;

and remove the following:

if (!$this->_useAutoload) {
    include self::getClassFile($this->myFile); 
}

Lastly, in the vendor\dompdf\dompdf\src\Renderer\Text.php, search for $this->_canvas->text($x, $y, $text, and put the following right before it:

$Arabic = new \App\Libraries\I18N\I18N_Arabic('Glyphs');
$text = $Arabic->utf8Glyphs($text);

and that's it. Now using the PDF class provided in the packages above will generate a pdf in Arabic with correct format.

Note that here i am using the Glyph class, if you are using another class from this library, you need to do all the above for the class as well

Laravel domPDF arabic characters generate PDF error

1 Answers