Convert a PDF document to a preview image in PHP without installing Ghostscript

Question

This has been asked before but the answer is always to use ghost script. This isn't available on hosts using cPanel. Is it possible to do without Ghostscript extension installed?

Answer 1

Just a quick suggestion for those considering using an external service to achieve this: now, some APIs allow to upload documents and retrieve their related info, thumbnail, etc.

For instance see Cloudinary (which offers a free plan) : https://cloudinary.com/blog/uploading_converting_and_generating_thumbnails_for_pdf_documents

Answer 2

You could compile a single binary of Imagemagick and deploy that to the webserver, like this guy. His issue sounds much like yours

I need to deploy ImageMagick's "convert" utility on a a shared host, where I don't have access to /usr/lib, env or anything else except the webspace. I can however drop a binary into the webspace, chmod it to 755 and run it (from the Apache context).

Building the standalone binary means it can include ghostscript as part of the binary. If you can't build on the target host, use a VM with the same OS, build the binary, then upload that to your webroot and call it w/ exec et al

Answer 3

You need ImageMagick and GhostScript.

<?php
$im = new imagick('file.pdf[0]');
$im->setImageFormat('jpg');
header('Content-Type: image/jpeg');
echo $im;
?>

The [0] means page 1.