Compose-style DSL for multi-page PDF generation with selectable text and vector output, top-down coordinates, simple drawing primitives (text, shapes, images), and small, standards-compliant files.
A PDF document builder for Compose Multiplatform apps. A small, Compose-style DSL for laying out multi-page PDFs — text, shapes, lines, and images — with selectable text and real vector output. Apache PDFBox under the hood; produces standards-compliant PDFs.
Generating a PDF from a CMP / Kotlin Desktop app today means one of three painful paths:
| Existing | Problem |
|---|---|
| Call out to a Java PDF library directly (iText / PDFBox) | Imperative + verbose; coords are bottom-up; no Compose idiom |
| Render Compose → bitmap → embed in PDF | Loses selectable text + vector quality; huge file sizes |
ComposePDF wraps PDFBox in a small Compose-style scope DSL — pdfDocument { page { ... } } —
with top-down coordinates, Color from compose.ui, and an API surface that maps cleanly
onto how you already think about layout. Real vector output. Text is selectable. Tiny files.
dependencies {
implementation("io.github.nadeemiqbal:compose-pdf:0.1.0")
}
val pdf: ByteArray = pdfDocument {
page {
text("Invoice #2026-0042", x = 50f, y = 50f, fontSize = 24f, bold = true)
line(50f, 75f, 545f, 75f)
text("Total: $1,234.56", x = 50f, y = 110f, fontSize = 14f)
}
}
File("invoice.pdf").writeBytes(pdf)
That's it. Open invoice.pdf in any viewer — text is selectable, vectors are crisp at any
zoom level, file is ~1.5 KB.
val pdf = pdfDocument(defaultPageSize = PdfPageSize.A4) {
page { /* defaults to A4 portrait */ }
page(size = PdfPageSize.Letter) { /* override per page */ }
page(size = PdfPageSize.A4.landscape()) { /* rotated */ }
}
Predefined: A3, A4, A5, Letter, Legal, Tabloid. For custom:
PdfPageSize.mm(210f, 297f) or PdfPageSize.inches(8.5f, 11f).
Inside a page { ... } you get a PdfPageScope with these primitives:
Coordinates: origin is top-left, y increases downward — matching how you already think about Compose layout. The library handles the PDFBox bottom-up flip internally.
No layout engine, no templating language — just direct vector commands. See
sample/desktopApp for a fuller example (invoice + multi-page report + certificate).
./gradlew :sample:desktopApp:run
Three buttons: Generate invoice, Generate report, Generate certificate. Each generates a real PDF in your temp directory and opens it in your default viewer.
| Target | Status |
|---|---|
| Desktop (JVM 11) | ✅ |
| iOS (x64, arm64, simulatorArm64) | ⏳ v0.2 |
v0.1 targets Desktop / JVM only — it uses Apache PDFBox 3.0.5 under the hood
(~5 MB, Apache 2.0). iOS / Web / Android are planned for v0.2 once Skiko's PDFDocument
bindings stabilise in the public Kotlin API (they're not exposed as of Skiko 0.10).
Skia (and therefore Skiko) ships a SkPDFDocument backend that would let this library run on
every CMP target — but the Kotlin bindings (org.jetbrains.skia.pdf.PDFDocument) are not in
the public API as of Skiko 0.10. Rather than bundle a fork, v0.1 ships with a rock-solid
JVM-native backend (PDFBox) and ports to iOS / Web / Android land in v0.2 once Skiko exposes
the PDF API publicly. The DSL itself is in commonMain — only the actual implementation is
platform-specific, so v0.2 will be a drop-in upgrade for existing call sites.
Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE.
| HTML → headless-browser → PDF |
| Heavy runtime; flaky output across machines |
page {
// Text — (x, y) is the baseline of the first glyph
text("Hello", x = 50f, y = 50f, fontSize = 14f, color = Color.Black, bold = false)
// Filled / stroked rectangle (pass null to either to skip that pass)
rect(50f, 100f, width = 200f, height = 80f, fillColor = Color(0xFFE3F2FD))
rect(50f, 200f, width = 200f, height = 80f, strokeColor = Color.Black, strokeWidth = 2f)
// Single line
line(50f, 320f, 545f, 320f, color = Color.Red, strokeWidth = 1f)
// Embedded image (ImageBitmap → PDImageXObject)
image(bitmap, x = 50f, y = 360f, width = 200f, height = 200f)
}
page(size = PdfPageSize.A4) {
text("Tickets shipped per month", x = 40f, y = 60f, fontSize = 18f, bold = true)
val data = listOf("Jan" to 18, "Feb" to 22, "Mar" to 31, "Apr" to 28, "May" to 35)
val (chartL, chartT, chartH, barW, gap, maxV) =
listOf(60f, 130f, 280f, 50f, 30f, 40)
line(chartL, chartT + chartH, chartL + 480f, chartT + chartH, Color.Black)
line(chartL, chartT, chartL, chartT + chartH, Color.Black)
data.forEachIndexed { i, (label, value) ->
val h = (value.toFloat() / maxV) * (chartH - 20f)
val x = chartL + 10f + i * (barW + gap)
rect(x, chartT + chartH - h, barW, h, fillColor = Color(0xFF1976D2))
text(label, x + 12f, chartT + chartH + 18f, fontSize = 11f)
text(value.toString(), x + 14f, chartT + chartH - h - 6f, fontSize = 10f, bold = true)
}
}
| Web (wasmJs) | ⏳ v0.2 |
| Android (minSdk 24) | ⏳ v0.2 |
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