PDF Generation in Go (Golang): Libraries and Examples

PDF Generation in Go (Golang): Overview of Libraries and Tools

Creating PDF documents is a common task in web development. In the Go (Golang) ecosystem, there are several mature libraries that allow you to generate PDFs for both simple reports and complex multi-page documents with tables, graphics, and fonts. In this article, we will review the main tools, their capabilities, and provide practical code examples.

Why Go for PDF Generation?

Go is a compiled language with excellent performance and a simple concurrency model. For PDF generation tasks, this means:

• Fast processing of large volumes of data
• Easy integration with web servers (net/http)
• The ability to parallelize the generation of multiple documents
• No external dependencies (the binary includes everything needed)

Main Libraries for Working with PDF in Go

1. gofpdf — Simple and Popular Library

gofpdf is a port of the well-known PHP library FPDF to Go. It provides a simple API for creating PDFs with basic elements: text, lines, rectangles, images, and tables. The library requires no external dependencies and supports Unicode through font embedding.

Example of creating a simple PDF with gofpdf:

package main

import (    "github.com/jung-kurt/gofpdf")

func main() {    pdf := gofpdf.New("P", "mm", "A4", "")    pdf.AddPage()    pdf.SetFont("Arial", "B", 16)    pdf.Cell(40, 10, "Hello, World!")    pdf.OutputFileAndClose("hello.pdf")}

Main features of gofpdf:

• UTF-8 support (requires embedding TrueType fonts)
• Automatic page breaks
• Vector graphics (lines, curves, fills)
• Image embedding (JPEG, PNG, GIF)
• Tables with dynamic data

2. UniPDF — Powerful Commercial Library

UniPDF (formerly FoxyUtils) is a professional solution for working with PDFs in Go. The library has an open source code, but a license is required for commercial use. UniPDF supports not only creation but also editing, conversion, and data extraction from PDFs.

Example of creating a PDF with UniPDF:

package main

import (    "os"    "github.com/unidoc/unipdf/v3/creator")

func main() {    c := creator.New()    c.NewPage()        // Adding text    text := c.NewStyledParagraph()    text.Append("UniPDF document example")    text.SetFontSize(18)    c.Draw(text)        // Saving    c.WriteToFile("unipdf_example.pdf")}

Unique features of UniPDF:

• Full parsing and editing of existing PDFs
• Support for forms, annotations, and bookmarks
• HTML to PDF conversion
• Working with digital signatures
• Text and image extraction

3. Maroto — PDF Generator Based on Visual Components

Maroto is built on top of gofpdf and offers a higher-level approach using the concept of a "grid". This is convenient for creating reports, invoices, and other structured documents.

Example with Maroto:

package main

import (    "fmt"    "github.com/johnfercher/maroto/v2/pkg/consts/align"    "github.com/johnfercher/maroto/v2/pkg/consts/fontstyle"    "github.com/johnfercher/maroto/v2/pkg/core"    "github.com/johnfercher/maroto/v2/pkg/props"    "github.com/johnfercher/maroto/v2")

func main() {    m := maroto.New()    m.Row(20, func() {        m.Col(12, func() {            m.Text("Invoice #123", props.Text{                Style: fontstyle.Bold,                Align: align.Center,            })        })    })        document, err := m.Generate()    if err != nil {