Merging Multiple Photos and PDFs into a Single PDF

I've built a method that merges multiple photos and PDFs into a single large PDF file using the following libraries:

use Imagick;
use Spatie\PdfToImage\Pdf;

I'm developing this on a Windows 11 machine.

Issue

When I hardcode the source and destination paths as follows:

$sourcePath = "C:\\Users\\test\\testPhotoCreation\\sourcePathForPdf\\";  
$destinationPdfPath = "C:\\Users\\test\\testPhotoCreation\\pdfCreatedDestination\\merged.pdf";

everything works as expected.

However, when I modify the implementation to accept a user-inputted path (retrieved via an HTML form), I get the following error when executing this line:

$pdf = new Pdf($file);

Error Message

FailedToExecuteCommand `"gs" -sstdout=%stderr -dQUIET -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dNOPROMPT -dMaxBitmap=500000000 -dAlignToPixels=0 -dGridFitTT=2 "-sDEVICE=pamcmyk32" -dTextAlphaBits=4 -dGraphicsAlphaBits=4 "-r72x72" -dPrinted=false "-sOutputFile=C:/Users/test/AppData/Local/Temp/magick-gzSUuBgN1oiEKEsxRVP20rd1XIgpCdtM%d" "-fC:/Users/test/AppData/Local/Temp/magick-3ZbYt3YgbMobScyYalUK5TNBTNwjgoPn`

Debugging Steps Taken

1. Ensured Proper Path Formatting: Used \\ in paths, but the issue persists.
2. Reverted Formatting Changes: Still encountering the same error.
3. Only Difference: The failing scenario dynamically receives paths from user input instead of being hardcoded.

Question

What could be causing this issue when using a dynamically received file path? Could it be related to:

• Path encoding issues on Windows?
• Permissions or security settings?
• Ghostscript (gs) not handling dynamically set paths correctly?

I've attached my code below, with the original hardcoded paths commented out.

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Full PHP Code

<?php

namespace App\Custom_class;
use Imagick;
use Spatie\PdfToImage\Pdf;
use Illuminate\Support\Str;
use Illuminate\Support\Collection;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\File;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage;

class Utilities
{
    public static function createPdfFromFiles($sourcePath,$destinationPdfPath)
    {    
        // $sourcePath = "C:\\Users\\test\\testPhotoCreation\\sourcePathForPdf\\";
        // $destinationPdfPath = "C:\\Users\\test\\testPhotoCreation\\pdfCreatedDestination\\merged.pdf";

        $sourcePath = trim($sourcePath); 
        $destinationPdfPath = trim($destinationPdfPath);

        if (!Str::endsWith($sourcePath, '\\')) {
            $sourcePath .= '\\'; // Append backslash if missing
        }

        if (!Str::endsWith($destinationPdfPath, '\\')) {
            $destinationPdfPath .= '\\'; // Append backslash if missing
        }

        // Temporary directory to store modified files before merging
        $sourcePathTempFiles =  $sourcePath.'tempFiles';

        // Copy all files
        $files = glob($sourcePath."*");

        if (!is_dir($sourcePathTempFiles)) {
            mkdir($sourcePathTempFiles, 0777, true);
        }

        foreach ($files as $file) {
            if (is_file($file)) { 
                copy($file,  $sourcePathTempFiles . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . basename($file));
            }
        }

        // Ensure destination folder exists
        if (!is_dir(dirname($destinationPdfPath))) {
            mkdir(dirname($destinationPdfPath), 0777, true);
        }

        // Get all image and PDF files from source directory
        $files = glob($sourcePathTempFiles . '/*.{jpg,jpeg,png,gif,bmp,pdf}', GLOB_BRACE);
        $images = []; // Array to store image paths

        foreach ($files as $file) {
            $extension = strtolower(pathinfo($file, PATHINFO_EXTENSION));

            if (in_array($extension, ['jpg', 'jpeg', 'png', 'gif', 'bmp'])) {
                // It's an image
                $images[] = $file;
            } elseif ($extension === 'pdf') {
                // Convert PDF to images
                $file = str_replace('/', '\\', trim($file));
                $filename = pathinfo($file, PATHINFO_FILENAME);
                $pdf = new Pdf($file);
                $pdfOutputPath =  $sourcePathTempFiles. '/temp_pdf_images_' . $filename;

                if (!is_dir($pdfOutputPath)) {
                    mkdir($pdfOutputPath, 0777, true);
                }

                // Convert each page in PDF to an image
                foreach (range(1, $pdf->getNumberOfPages()) as $pageNumber) {
                    $imagePath = "$pdfOutputPath/page_$pageNumber.jpg";
                    $pdf->setPage($pageNumber)->saveImage($imagePath);
                    $images[] = $imagePath;
                }
            }
        }

        if (empty($images)) {
            throw new \Exception("No valid images or PDFs found to merge.");
        }

        // Sort images based on file number
        $newImageArray = []; 

        foreach ($images as $image) {
            if (Str::contains($image, 'temp_pdf_images')) {
                $orderNumber = Str::before(Str::after($image, 'temp_pdf_images_'), '/');
                $pageNumber = Str::beforeLast(Str::after($image, 'page_'), '.');
                $tempImageInfo = [
                    'path' => $image,
                    'orderNumber' => $orderNumber,
                    'pageNumber' => $pageNumber
                ];
                $newImageArray[] = $tempImageInfo;
            } else {
                $temp = Str::afterLast($image, '/');
                $orderNumber = Str::beforeLast($temp, '.');   
                $tempImageInfo = [
                    'path' => $image, 
                    'orderNumber' => $orderNumber,
                ]; 
                $newImageArray[] = $tempImageInfo;        
            }
        }

        $collectionImage = collect($newImageArray);
        $sortedImageArray = $collectionImage->sortBy([
            ['orderNumber', 'asc'],
            ['pageNumber', 'asc'],
        ])->values();

        // Create a new Imagick instance
        $imagick = new Imagick();

        // Read images into Imagick
        foreach ($sortedImageArray as $image) {
            $img = new Imagick($image['path']);
            $img->setImageFormat('pdf'); // Ensure each image is treated as a PDF page
            $imagick->addImage($img);
        }

        // Merge images into a single PDF
        $imagick->setImageFormat('pdf');
        $imagick->writeImages($destinationPdfPath, true);

        // Delete the temporary folder
        if (File::exists($sourcePathTempFiles)) {
            File::deleteDirectory($sourcePathTempFiles);
        }
    }
}

---

Summary

This function:

1. Copies all images and PDFs into a temporary folder.
2. Processes PDFs by converting each page into an image.
3. Sorts files by order number and page number.
4. Merges all images into a single PDF using Imagick.
5. Deletes the temporary folder after processing.

Any insights or suggestions to resolve the issue with dynamically received file paths would be greatly appreciated!