PDF Generator

Node package to generate PDF documents on the server. The package uses pug as a templating language to create dynamic html files and the aeco pdf-api to convert the html to a pdf file.

How it works

const { pdf, html } = await pdfGenerator({
    pugPath: "path/to/your/pug/file.pug", // required 
    apiKey: "yourApiKey", // required 
    pdfSavePath: "path/to/a/location/to/save/your/document.pdf", // optional 
    htmlSavePath: "path/to/a/location/to/save/your/document.html" // optional 
    imagesPath: "path/to/a/directory/that/contains/images", // optional 
    data: {firstName:"Bob", lastName:"De Bouwer"}, // optional 
    apiEndpoint: "https://custom.apiendpoint.com", // optional
  });

Arguments:

• pugPath: the path to your pug template
• apiKey: the api key to authenticate in the pdf-api
• pdfSavePath: (optional) if specified, your pdf will be saved in this location
• htmlSavePath: (optional) if specified, the html rendered by the pugfile and your data and images will be saved in this location. This can be usefull for debugging purposes.
• imagesPath: (optional) if specified, images in this directory will be available to reference in your pug file by using the syntax: img(src=images["imagename.jpg"])
• data: (optional) if specified, the values from this object will be available to reference in your pug fuile by using the syntax: #{data.firstName}
• apiEndpoint: (optional) if specified, this value will overwrite the default api endpoint

Returned values:

If the promise is resolved, the pdf is returned as a buffer and the html file is returned as a string.

If a pdfSavePath is specified, you can work with the saved pdf file instead of the buffer. This means that the following code can also be used:

await pdfGenerator({args..., pdfSavePath:"path/to/your/document.pdf"})

Full example

1) create a pug template

//- template.pug
doctype html
html(lang="en")
  head
    title= pageTitle
    style
      include styles.css
  body
    h1 This is a test template
    p
      | my first name is #{data.firstName}
      | and my last name is #{data.lastName}
    p And ow, how could I forget, here is a picture of an angry cat
    p
      img(src=images["cat.jpg"] width="300px")
    .pagebreak
    p
      | and this content is on the next page!

2) create styles for the template

@import url("https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Roboto:ital,wght@0,100;0,300;0,400;0,500;0,700;0,900;1,100;1,300;1,400;1,500;1,700;1,900&display=swap");
@page {
  size: 21cm 29.7cm;
  margin: 20mm 20mm 20mm 20mm;
}

@media print {
  .pagebreak {
    page-break-before: always;
  }
}

body {
  font-family: "Roboto", sans-serif;
  font-weight: 300;
}

h1 {
  color: red;
  text-align: center;
  font-weight: 500;
  font-size: 23px;
}

p {
  line-height: 150%;
  font-size: 15px;
  text-align: left;
  color: black;
  font-weight: 300;
}

3) save your images in a directory

images
├──cat.jpg

4) create a data object

const data = {firstName:"Bob", lastName:"De Bouwer"}

Your file structure should now be as follows:

.
├── styles.css
├── template.pug
├── images
│   ├── cat.jpg

5) Execute the pdfGenerator

await pdfGenerator({
    pugPath: "./template.pug", 
    apiKey: "yourApiKey", 
    pdfSavePath: "./document.pdf", 
    imagesPath: "./images", 
    data: {firstName:"Bob", lastName:"De Bouwer"}, 
  });

and the document.pdf will be saved to your disk.

CSS Tips

If you want to use SASS you will first have to compile your scss files to css since pug only accepts css stylesheets.

Use the following css code to make your pdf A4 format and use pagebreak:

@page {
  size: 21cm 29.7cm;
  margin: 20mm 20mm 20mm 20mm;
}

@media print {
  .pagebreak {
    page-break-before: always;
  }
}