Node module that converts HTML files to PDFs.
The PDF looks great because it is styled by HTML5 Boilerplate or Bootstrap. What? - Yes! HTML is pushed into the HTML5 template index.html. Electron renders the page and saves it to a PDF. You can customize the page by adding custom CSS and JS assets.
- Uses Puppeteer in order to get more fine-grain PDF options.
- Use async/await and ES6 - no more coffee-script
- For migration in your current code, consider using the new
asyncfunctionality in your existing promise chains (see example)
npm install --save html5-to-pdf
or
npm install --global html5-to-pdf
Uses webpack and webpack-dev-server to let you see your changes live, and has the option to publish to HTML or PDF.
const HTML5ToPDF = require("../lib")
const path = require("path")
const run = async () => {
const html5ToPDF = new HTML5ToPDF({
inputPath: path.join(__dirname, "assets", "basic.html"),
outputPath: path.join(__dirname, "..", "tmp", "output.pdf"),
templatePath: path.join(__dirname, "templates", "basic"),
include: [
path.join(__dirname, "assets", "basic.css"),
path.join(__dirname, "assets", "custom-margin.css"),
],
})
await html5ToPDF.start()
await html5ToPDF.build()
await html5ToPDF.close()
console.log("DONE")
process.exit(0)
}
// Use the function in an existing promise chain
Promise.resolve( 'something' )
.then( result => {
return doSomething( result )
} )
.then( result => {
// Because async functions are promises under the hood we can treat the run function as a promise
return run()
} )
.catch( handleErrors )
// Usage in try/catch block
try {
run()
} catch (error) {
console.error(error)
}A Typescript definition for this library can be obtained by installing @types/html5-to-pdf.
Options are passed into the constructor.
Type: String
Required: true
Path to the input HTML
Type: String or Buffer
Path to the input html as a String, or Buffer. If specified this will override inputPath.
Type: String
Path to the output pdf file.
Type: Array<Object|String>
An array of strings or objects containing a type of ['css', 'js'] and a filePath pointing to the asset.
Example:
[
"/path/to/asset.css"
// ...
]or
[
{
"type": "css",
"filePath": "/path/to/asset.css"
}
// ...
]Type: Number
Default value: 0
Delay in milli-seconds before rendering the PDF (give HTML and CSS a chance to load)
Type: String
Default value: html5bp
The template to use when rendering the html. You can choose between html5bp (HTML5 Boilerplate) or htmlbootstrap (Boostrap 3.1.1)
Type: String
Default value: the html5-to-pdf/templates/#{options.template}
The template to use for rendering the html. If this is set, it will use this instead of the template path.
Type: String
The url to use for rendering the html. If this is set, this will be used for serving up the html. This will override options.templatePath and options.template
Type: Object
This object will be passed directly to puppeteer. The full list of options can be found here.
Type: Object
This object will be passed directly to puppeteer. The full list of options can be found here.
[ DEPRECATED ]
See options.pdf above for pdf options. Since some of these options are converted over to work with puppeteer, this is automatically done if options.pdf is left empty.
Type: String
Default value: A4
'A3', 'A4', 'Legal', 'Letter' or 'Tabloid'
Type: Boolean
Default value: false
true for landscape, false for portrait.
Type: Number
Default value: 0
- 0 - default
- 1 - none
- 2 - minimum
Type: Boolean
Default value: false
Whether to print CSS backgrounds.
To use html5-to-pdf as a standalone program from the terminal run
npm install --global html5-to-pdfUsage: html5-to-pdf [options] <path/to/html-file-path>
Options:
-V, --version output the version number
-i --include <path>..<path> path to either a javascript asset, or a css asset
--page-size [size] 'A3', 'A4', 'Legal', 'Letter' or 'Tabloid'
--landscape If set it will change orientation to landscape from portriat
--print-background Whether to print CSS backgrounds
-t --template [template] The template to used. Defaults to html5bp.
--template-path [/path/to/template/folder] Specifies the template folder path for static assets, this will override template.
--template-url [http://localhost:8080] Specifies the template url to use. Cannot be used with --template-path.
-d --render-delay [milli-seconds] Delay before rendering the PDF (give HTML and CSS a chance to load)
-o --output <path> Path of where to save the PDF
-h, --help output usage informationSee Example Dockerfile. Make sure to container with
--cap-add=SYS_ADMIN.
docker build -t local/html5-to-pdf-example -f examples/Dockerfile .
docker run --rm -i --cap-add=SYS_ADMIN local/html5-to-pdf-exampleRefer to puppeteer documentation.
(like on a server without X):
html5-to-pdf uses Puppeteer, which Google Chrome Headlessly, which in turn relies on an X server to render the pdf. If for whatever reason it can't find a running X server, it will silently fail.
To fix, just run whatever display server you prefer (that's implementing X). If you have no X server, chances are you are running on a headless server anyway, in which case there is no point in running a full-blown GUI (that's not facing any users). You can instead use Xvfb, a virtual frame buffer.
# (might need sudo)
apt-get install -y libgtk2.0-0 libgconf-2-4 libasound2 libxtst6 libxss1 libnss3 xvfb# (might need sudo)
Xvfb -ac -screen scrn 1280x2000x24 :9.0 &
export DISPLAY=:9.0It's ok if Xvfb can't find fonts or shows other warnings. If Xvfb can't start, it probably thinks there's another X server running. Check that. If there is no other X server running but Xvfb insists there is, run this:
# (might need sudo)
rm /tmp/.X11-unix/X1
rm /tmp/.X1