pdf-lib-utils

A utility library for advanced text and path drawing with @cantoo/pdf-lib.

This package provides helpers for drawing multi-line and single-line text with alignment, justification, overflow handling, and styled parts, as well as utilities for building and drawing complex paths (rectangles, ellipses, etc) on PDF pages.

Installation

npm install pdf-lib @cantoo/pdf-lib pdf-lib-utils

Quick Start

import { PDFDocument } from '@cantoo/pdf-lib';
import { drawTextArea, drawTextLine, PathBuilder, yFromTop, TextPart } from 'pdf-lib-utils';

const doc = await PDFDocument.create();
const page = doc.addPage([300, 400]);

// Example font loading (see @cantoo/pdf-lib docs for details)
const font = await doc.embedFont(...);

const parts: TextPart[] = [
  { text: 'Hello,', font, fontSize: 24 },
  { text: 'world!', font, fontSize: 24 },
  { text: 'This is a long line that should wrap automatically.', font, fontSize: 14 },
  { text: 'New line here.', font, newLine: true, fontSize: 18 },
  { text: 'Continued...', font, fontSize: 14 },
];

drawTextArea(page, {
  parts,
  x: 20,
  y: 300,
  width: 200,
  height: 150,
  align: 'center',
  verticalAlign: 'middle',
});

// Drawn on a single line, justified by parts.
// You can also justify by words (justifyWords) or by parts (justifyParts).
drawTextLine(page, {
  parts: [
    { text: 'Hello', font, fontSize: 12 },
    { text: 'World!', font, fontSize: 12 }
  ],
  x: 20,
  y: 100,
  width: 200,
  height: 30,
  align: 'justifyParts',
});

// Draw a rounded rectangle
PathBuilder.rectPath(page, {
  x: 20,
  y: 30,
  width: 200,
  height: 150,
  radius: 10,
  stroke: { type: 'CMYK', cyan: 0, magenta: 0, yellow: 1, key: 1 },
  strokeWidth: 4,
}).pushOperators();

// Draw an ellipse with a dashed border
PathBuilder.ellipsePath(page, {
  x: 20,
  y: 30,
  xRadius: 200,
  yRadius: 150,
  stroke: { type: 'CMYK', cyan: 0, magenta: 1, yellow: 0, key: 0 },
  strokeWidth: 4,
  dashArray: [10, 10],
  dashPhase: 0,
}).pushOperators();

Coordinate System: y from Top

All y measurements in this library are specified from the top of the page, not the bottom (as in raw PDF-lib). This makes it easier to reason about layout. Internally, the utility uses yFromTop(page, y, height) to convert to PDF-lib's coordinate system.

Text Utilities

drawTextArea(page, params)

Draws styled text parts in a rectangular area, supporting multi-line, wrapping, alignment, vertical alignment, and overflow handling.

• Multi-line: Text is automatically wrapped and split into lines as needed.
• Flexible overflow: You can choose to hide overflowing text, clip it, or handle it via a callback.
• Text parts: Each part can have its own font, size, color, opacity, and can force a new line with newLine: true.

Params:

• page: PDFPage — The PDF page to draw on.
• params: DrawTextAreaParams — Options for text, position, size, alignment, etc.

Example:

drawTextArea(page, {
	parts: sampleTextParts1(font),
	x: 20,
	y: 300,
	width: 200,
	height: 150,
	align: 'center',
	verticalAlign: 'middle',
	hideOnOverflow: false,
});

Overflow Handling and onOverflow

If the text does not fit, you can:

• Set hideOnOverflow: true to hide the text if it overflows.
• Set clipOverflow: true to only render the lines that fit.
• Provide an onOverflow callback to get detailed info about what overflowed:

drawTextArea(page, {
  ...,
  onOverflow: ({ overflowedLines, overflowedLineIndices, totalLines, renderedLines, overflowed, overflowX, overflowY, message }) => {
    if (overflowed) {
      console.log(message); // e.g. 'Text overflows Y (height)'
      // overflowedLines: array of lines that did not fit
      // overflowedLineIndices: indices of those lines
    }
  },
});

drawTextLine(page, params)

Draws a single line of styled text parts, with alignment and justification options. No wrapping.

• Single line only: If the text does not fit, it is considered overflow.
• Strict overflow: You can hide the line, or handle overflow via a callback.
• Text parts: Each part can have its own font, size, color, opacity.

Params:

• page: PDFPage — The PDF page to draw on.
• params: DrawTextLineParams — Options for text, position, size, alignment, etc.

Example:

drawTextLine(page, {
	parts: [{ text: 'Hello World', font, fontSize: 12 }],
	x: 20,
	y: 300,
	width: 200,
	height: 150,
	align: 'justifyWords',
	verticalAlign: 'middle',
	hideOnOverflow: true,
	onOverflow: (info) => {
		if (info.overflowed) {
			console.log(info.message); // e.g. 'Text overflows X (width)'
		}
	},
	opacity: 1,
});

Overflow Handling and onOverflow

The onOverflow callback for drawTextLine provides:

• overflowed: boolean
• overflowX, overflowY: booleans
• lineWidth, maxWidth, lineHeight, maxHeight: numbers
• parts: the text parts
• message: a summary string

TextPart

A text fragment with style. Used in drawTextArea and drawTextLine.

{
  text: string;
  font: PDFFont;
  fontSize?: number;
  color?: Color;
  opacity?: number;
  newLine?: boolean; // Forces a line break before this part (only for drawTextArea)
}

partWidth(part, textOverride?)

Returns the width of a TextPart (or a given string with the part's style).

splitPartToWords(part)

Splits a TextPart into an array of TextParts, one per word (preserving spaces).

Path Utilities

PathBuilder

A chainable builder for PDF path drawing. Supports rectangles, ellipses, lines, and more.

Instance methods:

• moveTo(x, y)
• lineTo(x, y)
• closePath()
• rect(x, y, width, height, radius?)
• ellipse(x, y, xRadius, yRadius)
• appendBezierCurve(x1, y1, x2, y2, x3, y3)
• fill(color)
• stroke(color, width?)
• fillAndStroke(fillColor, strokeColor, strokeWidth?)
• getOperators()
• pushOperators(page)

Static helpers:

• PathBuilder.rectPath(page, config) — Quickly create and draw a rectangle (optionally rounded).
• PathBuilder.ellipsePath(page, config) — Quickly create and draw an ellipse.

Clipping Content to a Path

You can use .clip() on a PathBuilderInstance to restrict drawing (e.g., images) to a custom shape:

PathBuilder.ellipsePath(page, {
  x: 20,
  y: 30,
  xRadius: 200,
  yRadius: 150,
  stroke: ..., // optional
  strokeWidth: ...,
  dashArray: ...,
})
  .clip(({ page, left, top }) => {
    page.drawImage(image, {
      x: left,
      y: yFromTop(page, 30, 200),
      width: 200,
      height: 200,
      opacity: 1,
    });
  })
  // You can also push the operators for the path to apply the styles of the ellipse (eg. border)
  .pushOperators();

This lets you mask any content (images, text, etc.) to a path.

QR Code Drawing Utility

drawQRCode(page, options)

Draws a QR code on a PDF page with customizable size, colors, border, margin, and corner radius. This utility uses the qrcode package to generate the QR code matrix and draws it using the PDF-lib path utilities.

Options:

• data: string — The data to encode in the QR code.
• x: number, y: number — Position of the QR code (top-left corner by default).
• width: number, height: number — Size of the QR code area.
• border?: Color — Border color.
• borderWidth?: number — Border width.
• background?: Color — Background color (default: transparent).
• backgroundOpacity?: number — Background opacity (default: 1).
• foreground?: Color — Foreground (QR squares) color (default: black).
• foregroundOpacity?: number — Foreground opacity (default: 1).
• margin?: number — Margin between the QR code and the border (default: 10).
• radius?: number — Corner radius for the background rectangle (default: 0).
• forgroundRadius?: number — Corner radius for each QR square (default: 0).
• dashArray?: number[] — Border dash pattern.
• dashPhase?: number — Border dash phase.
• fromTop?: boolean — Whether y is from the top (default: true).
• isolate?: boolean — Whether to isolate graphics state (default: true).

Example:

import { drawQRCode } from 'pdf-lib-utils';
import { cmyk } from '@cantoo/pdf-lib';

await drawQRCode(page, {
	data: 'https://www.google.com',
	x: 100,
	y: 100,
	width: 100,
	height: 100,
	border: cmyk(0, 0, 0, 1),
	borderWidth: 1,
	background: cmyk(0, 0, 0, 0),
	backgroundOpacity: 1,
	foreground: cmyk(0, 0, 0, 1),
	foregroundOpacity: 1,
	margin: 10,
	radius: 0,
	forgroundRadius: 0,
	dashArray: [1, 10],
	dashPhase: 0,
});

Graphics State Isolation

All utilities automatically save and restore the PDF graphics state using pushGraphicsState and popGraphicsState. This means that colors, opacity, and other styles set for one drawing operation do not affect subsequent drawings. You can safely mix and match text, shapes, and images without worrying about style bleed.

License

MIT