Generate simple PDF from HTML

#puppeteer #handlebars #node #pdf

html_to_pdf

Generate simple PDF invoice from HTML using puppeteer & handlebars

Introduce

Puppeteer

Puppeteer is Node.js library giving you access to a headless Chrome browser. This makes it a breeze to generate PDF files with Node.js
Handlebars

Handlebars provides the power necessary to let you build semantic templates effectively with no frustration

How to use

Run npm install to install package in package.json
Run node pdf.js to generate invoice.pdf

The PDF Invoice from HTML

Prepare content html (invoice.html)
Using handlebars to binding data to content html
Using Puppeteer to generate pdf from final html

const fs = require("fs");
const path = require("path");
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');
const handlebars = require("handlebars");

(async () => {

    var dataBinding = {
        items: [{
                name: "item 1",
                price: 100
            },
            {
                name: "item 2",
                price: 200
            },
            {
                name: "item 3",
                price: 300
            }
        ],
        total: 600,
        isWatermark: false
    }

    var templateHtml = fs.readFileSync(path.join(process.cwd(), 'invoice.html'), 'utf8');
    var template = handlebars.compile(templateHtml);
    var finalHtml = template(dataBinding);
    var options = {
        format: 'A4',
        headerTemplate: "<p></p>",
        footerTemplate: "<p></p>",
        displayHeaderFooter: false,
        margin: {
            top: "40px",
            bottom: "100px"
        },
        printBackground: true,
        path: 'invoice.pdf'
    }

    const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
        args: ['--no-sandbox'],
        headless: true
    });
    const page = await browser.newPage();
    await page.goto(`data: text/html,${finalHtml}`, {
        waitUntil: 'networkidle0'
    });
    await page.pdf(options);
    await browser.close();
})();

How to display paid stamp watermark on the invoice?

Using handlebars to check param isWatermark

  {{#if isWatermark}}
    <div style="border-width: 6px;border-style: solid; border-color: #008000;border-radius: 8px; color: #008000; opacity:0.6; position: absolute; z-index: 1; left:40%; top:30%; font-size: 60pt;-webkit-transform: rotate(-45deg);-ms-transform: rotate(-45deg);transform: rotate(-45deg); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Helvetica', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">
        PAID </div>
    {{/if}}

Change isWatermark: true and run node pdf.js again

You can find the source code at Github

Thank your time to read this post

PS:/ This is the first post on dev.to

Top comments (3)

Nick • Nov 1 '18

The data: text/html trick is cool to avoid having to serve the final HTML to Chrome. I guess if images were involved you'd need to start serving the files from somewhere though.

I recently wrote up a bit of an overview of various ways you can use Chrome headless for PDF conversion here.