This tool is dedicated to the generation of a PDF file from a given URL in a highly customizable manner. It makes use of the Google Puppeteer API to utilize Chromium to fulfill the task. It also ships some website examples which provide tips on how to design the pages to be printable.
- Why another PDF generation tool?
- Requirements
- Getting started
- Example Website
- Development
- Contributing
- License
- Code of Conduct
If you are into typesetting/LaTeX or tools like wkhtmltopdf you know they can be hard to manage by web devs or are not intented to be simple at usage. This is especially worse when it comes to dynamic content like user customizable info papers. pdfgen allows you to easily make use of the latest web technologies which are supported by Chromium. (including CSS3 flexbox, custom webfonts, etc)
- Node.js (>=16)
- GNU Make (development) (>=4.2.1)
The first and only preparation step is the installation of the pdfgen utility. Open up your favorite terminal emulator and paste the following command:
# Install the pdfgen utility
$ npm install -g pdfgenNPM will take care of the installation of the dependencies, including the Puppeteer API plus the Chromium build for your machine. All you need to do now is to use it like this:
# Generate a PDF from a URL
$ pdfgen 'http://google.com' google.pdfAs the getting started section demonstrated, the usage of the pdfgen utility is straightforward. It just requires two arguments, the URL and the destination of the resulting PDF file. But thats not all. You can customize the resulting PDF as well as the website which is visited. Here comes a complete list of supported commandline options:
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| -T, --timeout | The maximum time to wait for the page to be loaded in ms. 30000 |
| -d, --delay | Wait for a given time after the page was opened in ms. 1000 |
| -t, --network-timeout | Same as --delay, [deprecated] 1000 |
| -m, --media | Changes the CSS media type of the page. (page, print) |
| -l, --landscape | Paper orientation. (false, true) |
| -h, --header-footer | Display header and footer. (false, true) |
| -b, --background | Print background graphics. (false, true) |
| -s, --scale | Scale of the webpage rendering. (1) |
| -r, --range | Paper ranges to print, e.g., "1-5, 8". (prints all pages) |
| -f, --format | Paper format. If set, takes priority over width or height options. (A4) |
| -w, --width | Paper width, accepts values labeled with units. |
| -H, --height | Paper height, accepts values labeled with units. |
| -M, --margin | All margins, accepts values labeled with units. (0) |
| -N, --margin-top | Top margin, accepts values labeled with units. |
| -W, --margin-right | Right margin, accepts values labeled with units. |
| -S, --margin-bottom | Bottom margin, accepts values labeled with units. |
| -E, --margin-left | Left margin, accepts values labeled with units. |
| -p, --header-template | HTML template for the print header. |
| -P, --footer-template | HTML template for the print footer. |
| -a, --header | Additional HTTP header (eg. X-Custom: true) |
- px - pixel
- cm - centimeter
- in - inch
- mm - millimeter
- Letter: 8.5in x 11in
- Tabloid: 11in x 17in
- A0: 33.1in x 46.8in
- A2: 16.5in x 23.4in
- A4: 8.27in x 11.7in
- Legal: 8.5in x 14in
- Ledger: 17in x 11in
- A1: 23.4in x 33.1in
- A3: 11.7in x 16.5in
- A5: 5.83in x 8.27in
- date: formatted print date
- title: document title
- url: document location
- pageNumber: current page number
- totalPages: total pages in the document
This repository contains a full test page project which demonstrate the simple usage of the pdfgen utility on a custom website. It makes use of the pug template engine, SASS, and vanilla JavaScript. Just have a look at the few simple lines of code and play around with it or just view the resulting PDF file if your are curious.
There are some caveats you should know about: The PDF generation (print media) does not work very well with the responsive approach. You can of course implement your custom website this way and provide a different stylesheet for the print media type, but this won't save you from the content-per-page issue in case you care about fixed headers/footers. The last page at the example website will demonstrate this issue.
The general advise here is to use a custom page class which works like a
content container with a fixed height and width (make use of the 100vh/100vw
values for height and width to be "responsive" on the resulting media). With
this approach you just need to how much content will be on a single page. (If
you are in LaTeX, you will know about this concept already)
So in the end you take care of long dynamic texts with some functions on your template engine and cut it into fitting pieces for each page. You could implement a function which cuts the text after n characters while respecting word boundaries. Then the resulting set of chunks represent a single page by each.
These are the worst things to know. But here comes the good news: you can make use of any modern web technology, including CSS3 (flexbox, counters etc) and custom web fonts just like that.
After checking out the repo, run make install to install dependencies. Then,
run make test to run the tests.
To release a new version, update the version number in package.json, commit this change, and finally create a git tag for the version. The release to npmjs.com must be done manually at the moment.
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/hausgold/pdfgen. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.
The pdfgen utility is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.
Everyone interacting in the pdfgen project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.