@cats-cradle/html-to-pdf

Your Go-To Solution for PDF Generation from HTML.

HTMLtoPDF is a high-performance microservice built to empower web developers with a streamlined way to generate professional PDFs from HTML content. We firmly believe that HTML, a language that's approachable for web development beginners, should also be the preferred choice for most programmatic PDF generation.

Tired of complex PDF libraries and clunky alternatives like FPDF or TCPDF? HTMLtoPDF simplifies the entire process, making PDF generation a breeze. Say goodbye to intricate code to exactly mimic browsers rendering of the page and embrace a brighter future for PDF creation.

Quick Start

Generating PDFs with HTMLtoPDF is as easy as pie. Just deploy service to AWS by running command cdk:deploy and send request containing either a URL or HTML to the API Gateway endpoint:

curl -X POST https://nx7uv2rfy4.execute-api.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/default/v1/html-to-pdf/pdf \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"input": "URL", "output": "PDF", "url": "https://google.com"}' \
-o example.pdf

Output:

How it Works

HTMLtoPDF employs a headless version of Chromium within an AWS Lambda environment to seamlessly generate PDFs. This method supports a wide range of features, including text recognition, images, hyperlinks, print media queries, and table breaks, all with minimal code maintenance.

Key Features:

• Default Fonts: NodeJS Lambda Layers include default font files (*.tff), ensuring compatibility similar to a standard OS.
• Optimized Performance: A compressed Chromium version is deployed as a separate Lambda layer for superior performance.
• Binary Response Handling: Our API gateway is meticulously configured to handle binary responses, eliminating the headache of blank PDFs.
• Serverless Express Support: Serverless Express is pre-configured to support binary mime types seamlessly.

Troubleshooting

Needed to set Binary response in API Gateway and deploy the api

References

To dive deeper into HTMLtoPDF problem space, explore the following resources:

• Generating PDF with AWS Lambda
• Puppeteer Layers
• Configuring Binary Lambda Responses
• Serverless Express Binary Configuration
• Base64 to PDF Converter