Quick start

Up & running with mini-eric in 5 minutes.

What is mini-eric?

mini-eric is a collection of tools for processing German ELSTER XML documents with the ERiC API. It consists of:

• ceric: A command-line tool for processing ELSTER XML documents

• mini-eric-php: A PHP SDK that wraps the ceric binary for easy integration

• (optionally) cotto: A command-line tool for downloading objects from OTTER servers

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:

• PHP 8.3+

• Linux with glibc 2.14+ and libgcc_s 4.2+ (included in Ubuntu LTS and Debian 12+ and offical php docker images, but not alpine derivatives)

Installation

To install with Composer run:

install.sh

#!/bin/bash
set -e

TOKEN="${TOKEN:-YOUR_INDIVIDUAL_TOKEN}"
ID="${ID:-xx}"

# Add private repository
composer config repositories.rechtlogisch composer "https://rechtlogisch.repo.packagist.com/$ID/"

# Create auth.json
composer config --auth http-basic.rechtlogisch.repo.packagist.com token "$TOKEN"

# Require package
composer require "rechtlogisch/mini-eric-$ID"

# Link binaries
mkdir -p vendor/bin
ln -sf "../rechtlogisch/mini-eric-$ID/bin/ceric" vendor/bin/ceric
# ln -sf "../rechtlogisch/mini-eric-$ID/bin/cotto" vendor/bin/cotto # in case you need to download objects
ln -sf "../rechtlogisch/mini-eric-$ID/bin/eric/plugins" vendor/bin/eric-plugins

You could save the above to install.sh, make executable and run:

TOKEN="YOUR_INDIVIDUAL_TOKEN" ID="xx" ./install.sh

Your First Example

Let's process a simple ELSTER XML document:

Copy examples/info.xml or create:

examples/info.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<DatenTeil>
    <Nutzdatenblock>
        <NutzdatenHeader version="11">
            <NutzdatenTicket>0</NutzdatenTicket>
            <Empfaenger id="L">CS</Empfaenger>
        </NutzdatenHeader>
        <Nutzdaten>
            <Kontoinformation version="1" />
        </Nutzdaten>
    </Nutzdatenblock>
</DatenTeil>

Process with PHP SDK

<?php
use Rechtlogisch\MiniEric\Ceric;
use Rechtlogisch\MiniEric\Dto\CericInput;

$ceric = new Ceric();
$result = $ceric->draft(new CericInput(
    dataType: 'Kontoinformation',
    pathXml: '/path/to/info.xml',
    pathStorage: '/path/to/storage/',
));

if ($result->cericOutput->exitCode === '0') {
    echo "Success! PDF generated: " . $result->cericOutput->pathOutputFile;
} else {
    echo "Error: " . $result->cericOutput->message;
}

Read me!

Your indivudual package: rechtlogisch/mini-eric-$ID, contains a README.md. Please read it!

You can view it on Packagist: https://packagist.com/customers/$ID.rechtlogisch/packages or find it at vendor/rechtlogisch/mini-eric-$ID/README.md

$ID is your individual id. For example xx.

Get to know the official ELSTER documentation

Go to ELSTER documentation.

Open .xml files with a spreadsheet software (like Excel).

Based on the ELSTER documents you can create XML files.

What's Next?

• Learn about all available use cases

• Explore XML examples

• Read the API reference

• Check out troubleshooting tips