Installation & configuration

Requirements

PHP 8.2 or higher with the GD extension (ext-gd). Composer refuses to install the package without it.
Laravel 11, 12 or 13
A mailer in your .env, because signers are invited by mail. A new Laravel application has MAIL_MAILER=log, which writes every mail to storage/logs/laravel.log; that is enough to try the package.
A filesystem disk for the documents. The default is local, which needs no setup.

The PDF libraries that come along, setasign/fpdf and setasign/fpdi, need the zlib extension, which a standard PHP installation has.

Step 1. Install the package

composer require darvis/laravel-document-sign

The service provider and the Signer facade are registered through Laravel’s package discovery; there is nothing to add to bootstrap/providers.php.

Step 2. Run the migrations

php artisan migrate

The migrations are loaded from the package and create five tables, all prefixed signer_: signer_customers, signer_contacts, signer_documents, signer_signers and signer_audit_events. They cannot be published.

Step 3. Check the application URL and the mailer

Set APP_URL in .env to the address people use to reach the application. The signing link in the mail is a signed URL: Laravel computes a signature over the full address, so a link built with another host or scheme than the one the signer opens answers “403 Invalid signature”.

For real mail, set the MAIL_* values of your mail provider as described in the Laravel mail documentation. The invitation is sent during send(), not through the queue.

Step 4. Create the first portal user

The portal logs in with a user from your application’s users table, through the guard in signer.portal.guard. A guard is Laravel’s name for a way of logging in; web is the normal session login. Skip this step when you turn the portal off. Create a user if there is none yet:

php artisan tinker

App\Models\User::create([
    'name' => 'Admin',
    'email' => 'admin@example.com',
    'password' => Hash::make('change-me'),
]);

The portal is then available at /portal. Every user in that table can log in and sees everything; read Portal before you put this on a server with other users.

Check that it works

Run this in php artisan tinker. It builds a one page PDF with FPDF, which the package installs, and sends it to one signer:

$pdf = new FPDF;
$pdf->AddPage();
$pdf->SetFont('Helvetica', '', 14);
$pdf->Cell(0, 10, 'Test contract');
$pdf->Output('F', storage_path('app/test-contract.pdf'));

$document = Darvis\Signer\Facades\Signer::document(storage_path('app/test-contract.pdf'))
    ->title('Test contract')
    ->addSigner('Test signer', 'you@example.com')
    ->send();

$document->status->value;                          // "pending"
$document->auditEvents()->pluck('event')->all();   // ["document_created", "invitation_sent"]

Expect "pending" and the two audit events. With MAIL_MAILER=log the mail “Signature requested: Test contract” is now in storage/logs/laravel.log. Open the link from the mail in a browser, draw a signature and press “Sign document”. You should land on a page that says “Thank you, Test signer!”, and this returns "completed":

$document->refresh()->status->value;

The signed PDF is on the configured disk under signer/signed/.

Something else happened? Troubleshooting lists the messages, for example “PDF file not found”, “403 Invalid signature” and a missing table.

Publishing the config and the views

Publishing is optional. Both commands copy files into your application:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=signer-config   # config/signer.php
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=signer-views    # resources/views/vendor/signer

Publish the views only when you want to change them. A published view wins over the one in the package, so it no longer follows updates of the package. A published config/signer.php that misses a newer key keeps working: the default of the package applies to the missing key.

Configuration

All keys live in config/signer.php, in alphabetical order. None of them is needed to start. In your own code, read them through the accessor class Darvis\Signer\Support\SignerConfig, for example app(SignerConfig::class)->disk().

Key	Env variable	Default	Description
`default_signature_width`		`20.0`	Width of a placed signature in percent of the page width, when `addSigner()` gets no `width`; the height follows the aspect ratio of the drawn signature
`disk`	`SIGNER_DISK`	`local`	Filesystem disk for originals, signature images and signed PDFs
`link_expires_after_hours`	`SIGNER_LINK_EXPIRES_AFTER_HOURS`	`72`	Hours a signing link stays valid after the invitation was last sent; after that the signing page, the PDF and submitting a signature all answer 403
`portal.enabled`	`SIGNER_PORTAL_ENABLED`	`true`	Register the portal routes
`portal.guard`		`web`	Auth guard the portal logs in against; it has to be a session guard, because the login calls `attempt()`
`portal.middleware`		`['web']`	Middleware of all portal routes, the login included; keep `web` in it, the portal needs the session
`portal.prefix`		`portal`	URL prefix of the portal
`route_middleware`		`['web']`	Middleware of the signing routes; keep `web` in it for the session, CSRF and route model binding
`route_prefix`		`sign`	URL prefix of the signing routes
`signature_max_kilobytes`	`SIGNER_SIGNATURE_MAX_KILOBYTES`	`512`	Largest signature image a signer may submit, in kilobytes of decoded PNG data
`storage_path`	`SIGNER_STORAGE_PATH`	`signer`	Base path within the disk; files land in `originals/`, `signatures/` and `signed/` below it

The prefixes, the middleware and portal.enabled are read when the routes are registered. After a change run php artisan config:clear, and php artisan route:clear when you cache routes.

Translations

The portal and the signing page are English, with a Dutch translation in lang/nl.json. Set the application locale to nl for a Dutch interface. Texts go through __(), so you can add another language with a JSON file of your own, for example lang/de.json in your application, with the English text as the key.

Laravel Boost

The package ships Laravel Boost resources: a guideline and a laravel-document-sign-development skill, so an AI assistant in your application knows the signing flow, its failure modes and how to test it. Run php artisan boost:install, or php artisan boost:update --discover in a project that already uses Boost.