In this post, we gonna use Puppeteer to generate PDF files from HTML. With Puppeteer we can also generate screenshots. What is Puppeteer? The documentation says:
Puppeteer is a Node library that provides a high-level API to control Chrome or Chromium over the DevTools Protocol. Puppeteer runs headless by default but can be configured to run full (non-headless) Chrome or Chromium.
In this tutorial, we will use the following npm module –
express – A Node.js based web framework
body-parser – Node.js body parsing middleware.
puppeteer – Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control Chrome
Let’s create a folder for the project and initialize it, by running npm init.
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$ mkdir puppeteerPdfDemo $ cd puppeteerPdfDemo $ npm init --yes |
you will see the similar output in your terminal
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Wrote to C:\Users\LENOVO\Desktop\puppeteerPdfDemo\package.json: { "name": "puppeteerPdfDemo", "version": "1.0.0", "description": "", "main": "index.js", "scripts": { "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1" }, "keywords": [], "author": "", "license": "ISC" } |
install project dependencies
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npm install express --save npm install body-parser --save npm install puppeteer --save npm install handlebars --save |
Create a express server
create a file called index.js in the project root folder with below code.
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const express = require('express') const bodyParser = require('body-parser') const puppeteer = require('puppeteer'); const app = express() // parse application/x-www-form-urlencoded app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false })) // parse application/json app.use(bodyParser.json()) app.get("/generate-pdf-from-url", async (req, res, __) => { let result = await saveToPdf(req.query.url); res.attachment(`PDF-from-URL-puppeteer.pdf`); res.contentType("application/pdf"); res.send(result); }); // helper functions const saveToPdf = async url => { // Browser actions & buffer creator const browser = await puppeteer.launch({ args: ["--no-sandbox", "--disable-setuid-sandbox"] }); const page = await browser.newPage(); await page.goto(url); const pdf = await page.pdf(); await browser.close(); // Return Buffer return pdf; }; app.listen(3000,() => { console.log(`http://localhost:3000/ app is running.`); }) |
Now run the application, with node index.js and once it is up you can access the app as shown below
http://localhost:3000/generate-pdf-from-url?url=https:://arjunphp.com
I hope you like this Post, Please feel free to comment below, your suggestion and problems if you face - we are here to solve your problems.
I am Arjun from Hyderabad (India). I have been working as a software engineer from the last 7+ years, and it is my passion to learn new things and implement them as a practice. Aside from work, I like gardening and spending time with pets.
