What is Ruby FPDF?

Ruby FPDF is a Ruby port of Olivier Plathey's excellent PDF generator, FPDF. FPDF is written in PHP, and as such can only be used from PHP scripts. Ruby FPDF, as the name suggests, is written in Ruby and can be used from Ruby scripts.

Ruby FPDF was ported and is maintained by Brian Ollenberger. If you need to contact me, see the contact link above.

Documentation

At this time, I have not written any documentation for Ruby FPDF, since the behaviour is almost identical to that of FPDF 1.53. The primary difference is in how the final PDF file is extracted. In Ruby there is no need to send a PDF to a web browser like there is with the PHP version. The basic usage should be made clear in the examples.

There are now three extensions that come with Ruby FPDF. There is a bookmark support module, an EPS image module, and a Chinese language support module. All are based on similar modules for the PHP FPDF library and all are direct ports. Please see the examples and the header comments in the source for these modules for their usage.

Contributions

Kim Shrier has contributed bug fixes, examples, external fonts support, JPEG support, and an upgrade to FPDF version 1.53.

Sylvain Lafleur contributed the initial port of the bookmark module.

Thiago Jackiw contributed the EPS module, which is ported from the PHP module by Valentin Schmidt.

Thanks also to the others who have contributed bug reports and fixes.

Download Ruby FPDF

You can download Ruby FPDF below. It is released under a permissive license, similar to that of FPDF. I only ask that you retain the copyright notice at the top of the source file. You may make modifications to FPDF, but if you redistribute those modifications, make it clear in a comment immediately before or after the copyright notice that you have modified it. I also wouldn't mind if you sent patches back to me, but you are not strictly required to do so.

My version numbering system is as follows. The version number is the same as the corresponding equivalent version of FPDF. I append a letter to distinguish subsequent releases of Ruby FPDF within one version of FPDF, in case that is necessary.

• Ruby FPDF 1.53d - Released July 19, 2006. This release comes with more bug fixes and a new port of EPS support by Thiago Jackiw. Many thanks to everybody who has contributed feedback and bug fixes.