Olaf Ranai { dev-it-out }

Posted on May 16, 2022 • Updated on May 17, 2022

Building a simple invoice generator with Node Js

#javascript #invoice #node

Why ❓🤔

After each online coaching sessions, at the beginning, that was a pain to find a good invoice generator platform as I was not yet ready for a 20€ monthly subscription just for handling the invoice part.

None was enough flexible for my own use 🙄 so.. I decided to build my own mini-invoice generator with Node Js ✅ ( that took approx 1h max ⌛️ )

No more talk..Straight to the point 💪🏼

The main parts ⚙️:

1. Storing clients in Json :

Yep that one is simple..for now x)

(Note: these are fictional characters of course 😝 )

2. Creating the route:
Using express router, just create a POST /invoice route.
const router = express.Router(); router.post('/', handleCreateInvoice);

Then add the Joi Schema. Why ? It allows to define schema and validate the schema before calling the controller/handler of invoice creation.

Source: https://joi.dev/

3. Handling the invoice creation:

I used the module pdf-kit to generate the pdf to be sent to the client.

pdf-kit

4. Email sending:
A small function using gmail-send npm module which accepts html as an input

Yep..so what about the result ?

A snapshot of my first trials ^^ ( yep that email should be more personnalized and better structure 😊 )

Insomnia POST Call

Final result 😁

The pdf:

Next steps:

Front-end ( React 🤔 )
Database 💿
make it online x)
Iterate 👀

And you 💪🏼?

Tell us in the comments which mini-project you built 👀😊

Wanna support me ?

I am blogging during my free time ^^ like most people on this platform 😊 however I'm not against a small coffee if you want to support me 💪🏼 Link below:

https://ko-fi.com/dev_it_out

P.S: I added the sample on Github ( https://github.com/njivaolafpro/invoice-management-sample

Top comments (28)

Gabriel Laurencio • May 19 '22

i built a mini project for knowing new chapters of mangás in site and warn in my channel in discord when has new releases, basically my project did web scraping in specific web page.

github.com/laurencioScript/sakamot...

Olaf Ranai { dev-it-out } • May 20 '22

nice ^^ would love having an english version of the README though :/

Andrew Baisden • May 16 '22

Cool project.

Olaf Ranai { dev-it-out } • May 17 '22

thanks ^^ was just a small hobby ^^

cednore • May 19 '22

So Nice!

Abel Lifaefi Mbula • Jun 25 '22

A good short that goes straight to the main point. Hope you'll open source the project.

Olaf Ranai { dev-it-out } • Jun 28 '22

thanks ^^
It is on git

github.com/njivaolafpro/invoice-ma...
( need to clean up a bit the doc though ;) )

Kelsey Jones • May 20 '22

Awesome article.

Olaf Ranai { dev-it-out } • Jun 28 '22

thank you ^^

Clifford Watson • May 20 '22

good read

Aarav Reddy • May 23 '22

Thanks for writing

Olaf Ranai { dev-it-out } • Jun 28 '22

no prob ;)

Felipe Genuino • May 16 '22

Nice work

Olaf Ranai { dev-it-out } • May 17 '22

thanks x)

umeya kassim • May 19 '22

How does one know the right library to use in this case of generation

Olaf Ranai { dev-it-out } • May 19 '22

for the pdf generation, there are some on npm, I usually use the most stable with a good community ;)
( I tend to avoid html -> pdf as there are some bugs in the zooming part )