The Factory

The WeasyPrintFactory is the core class for generating PDFs. It serves as the main entry point for all PDF generation operations.

Instantiating a Factory

Create a new instance by directly instantiating the WeasyPrintFactory class:

use WeasyPrint\WeasyPrintFactory;

$factory = new WeasyPrintFactory();

You can optionally pass configuration using the Config class for type-safety and clear option hints:

use WeasyPrint\Objects\Config;

$factory = new WeasyPrintFactory(
  new Config(
    timeout: 60,
    logOutput: false
  )
);

Alternatively, you can pass an array, which is useful when injecting configuration from a repository (like Laravel's config() helper):

$factory = new WeasyPrintFactory([
  'timeout' => 60,
  'log_output' => false,
]);

TIP

The Config class is recommended as it provides type-safety and IDE autocomplete for available options.

How to configure the factory

Using in a Class

Once you have a factory instance, you can inject it into your services and use it to prepare sources and generate PDFs:

<?php

namespace Services;

use WeasyPrint\WeasyPrintFactory;

class InvoiceService
{
  private WeasyPrintFactory $factory;

  public function __construct()
  {
    $this->factory = new WeasyPrintFactory();
  }

  public function generateDocument(string $documentId): void
  {
    // Use the factory for PDF generation
  }
}

Dependency Injection

For frameworks that support Dependency Injection or Inversion of Control (IoC) – where the framework automatically manages creating and passing objects to your classes – use the WeasyPrint\Contracts\WeasyPrint interface instead of the concrete class:

<?php

namespace Services;

use WeasyPrint\Contracts\WeasyPrint;

class InvoiceService
{
  public function __construct(
    private WeasyPrint $weasyprint
  ) {}

  public function generateDocument(string $documentId): void
  {
    // Use the injected instance for PDF generation
  }
}

This approach allows your code to remain decoupled from the concrete implementation and makes testing easier.

About Dependency Injection

Instead of creating objects yourself inside a class, you declare what you need in your constructor. The framework automatically provides these dependencies. This makes code easier to test and more flexible to change.

For Laravel

If you're using Laravel, the package automatically binds the WeasyPrintFactory to the WeasyPrint interface as a scoped singleton in your container. This means a single factory instance will be reused throughout a request lifecycle (even when using Laravel Octane).

Learn more about the Laravel integration

For Other Frameworks

For other frameworks that support a service container or dependency injection system, you'll need to manually bind the WeasyPrintFactory to the WeasyPrint interface. The exact syntax depends on your framework's container - here's a conceptual example:

// In your container setup/bootstrap file
$container->singleton(
  WeasyPrint::class,
  fn () => new WeasyPrintFactory()
);

Check your framework's documentation for how to register singleton or shared services.

Checking the WeasyPrint Version

You can check the installed WeasyPrint binary version using getWeasyPrintVersion():

$version = $factory->getWeasyPrintVersion();
// e.g. "68.0"

This can be useful for debugging or verifying your environment is set up correctly.