ezPDF

What's this?

This is a simple markdown to pdf parser that supports custom CSS stylesheets.

In the future, ezPDF will allow you to preview files and maybe even edit them in the Browser using markdown.

How can I use it?

Run

npx ezpdf [filename]

Substituting [filename] for the name of the markdown file you want to print as PDF.

For example:

npx ezpdf mylittlefile.md

Will produce a file named mylittlefile.pdf

This takes a while (about 20~30 seconds) to run, because npx has to temporarily install the Chromium browser.

If you find yourself using the command repeatedly, you may consider installing the package either globally or locally.

Installing locally

If you find yourself converting the same file, you should consider installing the package locally.

Run

npm install ezpdf

or

yarn add ezpdf

Then, you can use npx as usual (npx ezpdf [filename]) to run the package from the local node_modules/bin, and it will run much faster (under 1s usually).

Installing globally

Alternatively, if you find yourself parsing multiple files over different folders, you may want to install the package globally.

In that case, run

npm install -g ezpdf

or

yarn global add ezpdf

Afterwards, you can run

ezpdf [filename]

awywhere to get the same performance as running from a local installation.

How does it work?

ezPDF runs on 3 steps:

1. Converts the markdown file to HTML using an unified pipeline. During this step, it also extracts YAML configuration from the frontmatter to create the stylesheet and append links to the HTML file head;
2. Serves the HTML file locally on port 8080 using http-server;
3. Navigates to the page using puppeteer and prints the PDF file through its headless Chromium browser.

Afterwards, it cleans up the temp folder created during the process.

How can I contribute?

Thanks for the interest! Please, read the CONTRIBUTING file

License

This project uses the classic MIT open-source license, which means you can use anything here for free for any commercial or non-commercial ends, but if you replicate parts of the code, the resulting project must also follow the same license.

It also means this software is provided "as is", with no warranty of any kind.

For more info, read LICENSE.md