electron-pdf

A command line tool to generate PDF from URL, HTML or Markdown files with electron.

I have a blog post explain why PDF Generation On The Web

Production ready? See it in action for the Myanmar Election!

Install

npm install electron-pdf -g

For gnu/linux installations without a graphical environment:

$ sudo apt-get install xvfb # or equivalent
$ export DISPLAY=':99.0'
$ Xvfb :99 -screen 0 1024x768x24 > /dev/null 2>&1 &
$ electron-pdf ...

There is also an example docker machine here.

Usage

To generate a PDF from a HTML file

$ electron-pdf index.html ~/Desktop/index.pdf

To generate a PDF from a Markdown file

$ electron-pdf index.md ~/Desktop/index.pdf

To generate a PDF from a Markdown file with custom CSS(defaut to Github markdown style)

$ electron-pdf index.html ~/Desktop/index.pdf -c my-awesome-css.css

To generate a PDF from a URL

$ electron-pdf https://fraserxu.me ~/Desktop/fraserxu.pdf

To specify browser options

The [BrowserWindow supports many options](https://github .com/electron/electron/blob/master/docs/api/browser-window.md#new-browserwindowoptions) which you may define by passing a JSON Object to the --browserConfig option.

Some common use cases may include:

• height and width - electron-pdf calculates the browser height and width based off of the dimensions of PDF page size multiplied by the HTML standard of 96 pixels/inch. So only set these values if you need to override this behavior
• show - to display the browser window during generation

$ electron-pdf https://fraserxu.me ~/Desktop/fraserxu.pdf --browserConfig '{"show":true}'

To generate a PDF after the an async task in the HTML

electron-pdf ./index.html ~/Desktop/README.pdf -e

In your application, at the point which the view is ready for rendering

try {
    // IE doesn't support this but that's ok, it runs it in Electron/Chrome
    document.body.dispatchEvent(new Event('view-ready'))
} catch (e){}

More

  A command line tool to generate PDF from URL, HTML or Markdown files

  Options
    --help                     Show this help
    --version                  Current version of package
    -i | --input               String - The path to the HTML file or url
    -o | --output              String - The path of the output PDF
    
    --browserConfig            String - A valid JSON String that will be parsed into the options passed to electron.BrowserWindow
    -c | --css                 String - The path to custom CSS
    -b | --printBackground     Boolean - Whether to print CSS backgrounds.
                                 false - default
    -s | --printSelectionOnly  Boolean - Whether to print selection only
                                 false - default
    -p | --pageSize            String - Can be A3, A4, A5, Legal, Letter, Tabloid or an Object containing height and width in microns
                                "A4" - default
    -l | --landscape           Boolean - true for landscape, false for portrait.
                                 false - default
    -m | --marginsType          Integer - Specify the type of margins to use
                                 0 - default
                                 1 - none
                                 2 - minimum
    -d | --disableCache        Disable HTTP caching
    -w | --outputWait          Integer – Time to wait (in MS) between page load and PDF creation
    -e | --waitForJSEvent      String - The name of the event to wait before PDF creation
                               'view-ready' - default
    

  Usage
    $ electron-pdf <input> <output>
    $ electron-pdf <input> <output> -l

  Examples
    $ electron-pdf http://fraserxu.me ~/Desktop/fraserxu.pdf
    $ electron-pdf ./index.html ~/Desktop/index.pdf
    $ electron-pdf ./README.md ~/Desktop/README.pdf -l
    $ electron-pdf ./README.md ~/Desktop/README.pdf -l -c my-awesome-css.css

Inspired by electron-mocha

License

MIT