generate-api-pdf

📄 Generate professional, print-ready API documentation PDFs from OpenAPI JSON specs

A standalone CLI tool that transforms OpenAPI/Swagger JSON specifications into beautiful, formal PDF documents with selectable text, internal links, and search capability.

Features

• Professional PDF output — Navy/white/grey color scheme, A4 format with proper margins
• Text selectable — Real vector PDF, not screenshots
• Internal links — Clickable TOC that navigates to sections
• Multiple specs — Combine multiple OpenAPI specs into one document
• Customizable — Company name, project name, theme options
• EJS templates — Easy to modify layout and styling
• Zero config — Works out of the box with any valid OpenAPI 3.x JSON

Quick Start

# Install globally
npm install -g generate-api-pdf

# Or use with npx (no install)
npx generate-api-pdf -i openapi.json -c "Acme Corp" -p "Acme API"

Usage

generate-api-pdf -i <openapi.json...> -c <company> -p <project> [options]

Options

| Option | Description | Default | |--------|-------------|---------| | -i, --input <paths...> | OpenAPI JSON file path(s) | required | | -c, --company <name> | Company name for cover page | required | | -p, --project <name> | Project name for cover page | required | | -o, --output <path> | Output PDF file path | ./<project>-api-docs.pdf | | --base-url <url> | Override base URL in documentation | From spec | | --auth-type <type> | Authentication type label | From spec | | --theme <preset> | Color theme: navy (default), dark, blue | navy | | --no-cover | Skip cover page | — | | --no-toc | Skip table of contents | — | | --dev | Save intermediate HTML for debugging | — |

Examples

# Single spec
generate-api-pdf -i api-spec.json -c "My Company" -p "My API"

# Multiple specs combined
generate-api-pdf \
  -i gateway-spec.json -i admin-spec.json \
  -c "My Company" -p "Full Platform API"

# Custom output path
generate-api-pdf -i spec.json -c "Corp" -p "API" -o ./docs/api.pdf

# Debug mode (saves HTML too)
generate-api-pdf -i spec.json -c "Corp" -p "API" --dev

Programmatic API

import { parseOpenApiSpec } from 'generate-api-pdf/parser.mjs';
import { renderHtml } from 'generate-api-pdf/renderer.mjs';
import { generatePdf } from 'generate-api-pdf/generator.mjs';

const spec = parseOpenApiSpec(openApiJson);
const html = renderHtml({ company: 'Acme', project: 'API', specs: [spec] });
await generatePdf(html, './output.pdf');

How It Works

1. Parse — OpenAPI JSON → structured data (endpoints, schemas, parameters)
2. Render — Data + EJS templates → HTML with professional CSS
3. Generate — HTML → PDF via Puppeteer page.pdf() (vector, text-selectable)

Template Customization

Templates live in templates/ and use EJS:

templates/
├── main.ejs              # Master layout
└── partials/
    ├── styles.ejs        # All CSS (modify for theming)
    ├── cover.ejs         # Cover page
    ├── toc.ejs           # Table of contents
    ├── endpoints.ejs     # API endpoint sections
    ├── schemas.ejs       # Schema reference
    ├── param-table-rows.ejs
    └── param-row.ejs     # Nested property rows

All spec data is HTML-escaped via the esc() helper to prevent injection.

Requirements

• Node.js >= 18.0.0
• Puppeteer downloads Chromium automatically on first run

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

License

MIT