TCPDF is twice as slow as FPDF with the same code

Question

I am currently using FPDF to create fairly complex reports and am trying to switch to TCPDF, but I found that my code working through TCPDF is about half as slow. Since my PDF files already take up to a minute to generate, I cannot afford this slowdown, but I would really like to use some TCPDF features (for example, bookmarking).

If anyone has any information on this issue, I would really appreciate you to have TCPDF speed up or just confirm that it is slower than FPDF, so I can forget about it and just stick with FPDF.

Answer 1

Here is a sweet solution, beats 2 minutes for me. PDF files are created in 3 seconds!

http://www.bitrealm.net/2010/08/tcpdf-is-slow-here-is-the-solution/

Replace

$font = $this->_getTrueTypeFontSubset($font, $subsetchars); 

with this:

 / Alcal: $font2cache modification // This modification creates utf-8 fonts only the first time, // after that it uses cache file which dramatically reduces execution time if (!file_exists($fontfile.'.cached')){ // calculate $font first time $subsetchars = array_fill(0, 512, true); // fill subset for all chars 0-512 $font = $this->_getTrueTypeFontSubset($font, $subsetchars); // this part is actually slow! // and then save $font to file for further use $fp=fopen($fontfile.'.cached','w'); $flat_array = serialize($font); // fwrite($fp,$flat_array); fclose($fp); } else { // cache file exist, load file $fp=fopen($fontfile.'.cached','r'); $flat_array = fread($fp,filesize($fontfile.'.cached')); fclose($fp); $font = unserialize($flat_array); } 

Answer 2

http://www.tcpdf.org/performances.php

By default, TCPDF allows a subset of fonts to reduce the size of Unicode TTF embedded fonts; this process, which is very slow and requires a lot of memory, can be disabled using the setFontSubsetting (false) method;

It was a real solution for me.

Answer 3

Starting with version 5.9.067, TCPDF performance has been significantly improved. Each new release seems to work better. In addition, you can tune it to improve performance, as described at http://www.tcpdf.org/performances.php

Answer 4

TCPDF performance can be tuned by disabling unused functions in the configuration file and disabling slow functions, such as a subset of fonts. Using only the main fonts (e.g. Helvetica, Times, ...) in a mode other than UTF8, you can get good results. Alternatively, you can install XCache on your server to improve PHP performance. For more information, see the official http://www.tcpdf.org website and forums.