javascript node js generate pdf code example

Example 1: How to Create PDFs in Node.js using PDF Kit

/*
    This code comes from Vincent Lab
    And it has a video version linked here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR8Q43bJfwc
*/

// Import dependencies
const fs = require("fs");
const PDFDocument = require("./pdfkit-tables");

// Load the patients 
const patients = require("./patients.json");

// Create The PDF document
const doc = new PDFDocument();

// Pipe the PDF into a patient's file
doc.pipe(fs.createWriteStream(`patients.pdf`));

// Add the header - https://pspdfkit.com/blog/2019/generate-invoices-pdfkit-node/
doc
    .image("logo.png", 50, 45, { width: 50 })
    .fillColor("#444444")
    .fontSize(20)
    .text("Patient Information.", 110, 57)
    .fontSize(10)
    .text("725 Fowler Avenue", 200, 65, { align: "right" })
    .text("Chamblee, GA 30341", 200, 80, { align: "right" })
    .moveDown();

// Create the table - https://www.andronio.me/2017/09/02/pdfkit-tables/
const table = {
    headers: ["Name", "Address", "Phone", "Birthday", "Email Address", "Blood Type", "Height", "Weight"],
    rows: []
};

// Add the patients to the table
for (const patient of patients) {
    table.rows.push([patient.name, patient.address, patient.phone, patient.birthday, patient.emailAddress, patient.bloodType, patient.height, patient.weight])
}

// Draw the table
doc.moveDown().table(table, 10, 125, { width: 590 });

// Finalize the PDF and end the stream
doc.end();

Example 2: node js create pdf from html

The problem with using PDF converter libraries available on NPM like pdfkit is that, you gonna have to recreate the page structures again in your html templates to get the desired output.

One of the best approach to rendering html and convert to pdf is by using Puppeteer on NodeJs. Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control Chrome or Chromium over the DevTools Protocol. It can be used to generate screenshots and PDFs of html pages in your case.