Convert SVG image to PNG with PHP

That's funny you asked this, I just did this recently for my work's site and I was thinking I should write a tutorial... Here is how to do it with PHP/Imagick, which uses ImageMagick:

$usmap = '/path/to/blank/us-map.svg';
$im = new Imagick();
$svg = file_get_contents($usmap);

/*loop to color each state as needed, something like*/ 
$idColorArray = array(
     "AL" => "339966"
    ,"AK" => "0099FF"
    ...
    ,"WI" => "FF4B00"
    ,"WY" => "A3609B"
);

foreach($idColorArray as $state => $color){
//Where $color is a RRGGBB hex value
    $svg = preg_replace(
         '/id="'.$state.'" style="fill:#([0-9a-f]{6})/'
        , 'id="'.$state.'" style="fill:#'.$color
        , $svg
    );
}

$im->readImageBlob($svg);

/*png settings*/
$im->setImageFormat("png24");
$im->resizeImage(720, 445, imagick::FILTER_LANCZOS, 1);  /*Optional, if you need to resize*/

/*jpeg*/
$im->setImageFormat("jpeg");
$im->adaptiveResizeImage(720, 445); /*Optional, if you need to resize*/

$im->writeImage('/path/to/colored/us-map.png');/*(or .jpg)*/
$im->clear();
$im->destroy();

the steps regex color replacement may vary depending on the svg path xml and how you id & color values are stored. If you don't want to store a file on the server, you can output the image as base 64 like

<?php echo '<img src="data:image/jpg;base64,' . base64_encode($im) . '"  />';?>

(before you use clear/destroy) but ie has issues with PNG as base64 so you'd probably have to output base64 as jpeg

you can see an example here I did for a former employer's sales territory map:

Start: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Blank_US_Map_(states_only).svg

Finish:

Edit

Since writing the above, I've come up with 2 improved techniques:

1) instead of a regex loop to change the fill on state , use CSS to make style rules like

<style type="text/css">
#CA,#FL,HI{
    fill:blue;
}
#Al, #NY, #NM{
    fill:#cc6699;
}
/*etc..*/
</style>

and then you can do a single text replace to inject your css rules into the svg before proceeding with the imagick jpeg/png creation. If the colors don't change, check to make sure you don't have any inline fill styles in your path tags overriding the css.

2) If you don't have to actually create a jpeg/png image file (and don't need to support outdated browsers), you can manipulate the svg directly with jQuery. You can't access the svg paths when embedding the svg using img or object tags, so you'll have to directly include the svg xml in your webpage html like:

<div>
<?php echo file_get_contents('/path/to/blank/us-map.svg');?>
</div>

then changing the colors is as easy as:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/path/to/jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    $('#CA').css('fill', 'blue');
    $('#NY').css('fill', '#ff0000');
</script>

You just need imagepng() then. In fact it almost becomes a one-liner:

 imagepng(imagecreatefromstring(file_get_contents($filename)), "output.png");

You would use $_FILES["id"]["tmp_name"] for the filename, and a different output filename obviously. But the image format probing itself would become redundant.

You might want to check your version with

convert --version

the following version happily does the intended conversion:

Version: ImageMagick 6.7.7-0 2012-05-27 Q16 http://www.imagemagick.org
Copyright: Copyright (C) 1999-2012 ImageMagick Studio LLC
Features:  OpenCL

It is available in the current macports port.

This version:

Version: ImageMagick 6.6.9-7 2012-04-30 Q16 http://www.imagemagick.org
Copyright: Copyright (C) 1999-2011 ImageMagick Studio LLC
Features: OpenMP   

In Ubuntu 12.04 LTS did not work ...