Generate a simple PDF from HTML

Wed, Jul 22, 2020 2-min

Generate a simple PDF invoice from HTML using puppeteer & handlebars.

Invoice

Introduce

Puppeteer is Node.js library giving you access to a headless Chrome browser. This makes it a breeze to generate PDF files with Node.js

Handlebars provides the power necessary to let you build semantic templates effectively with no frustration

How to use

  • Run npm install to install package in package.json
  • Run node pdf.js to generate invoice.pdf

Generate invoice

  1. Prepare content html (invoice.html)
  2. Using handlebars to binding data to content html
  3. Using Puppeteer to generate pdf from final html
const fs = require("fs");
const path = require("path");
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');
const handlebars = require("handlebars");

(async () => {

    var dataBinding = {
        items: [{
                name: "item 1",
                price: 100
            },
            {
                name: "item 2",
                price: 200
            },
            {
                name: "item 3",
                price: 300
            }
        ],
        total: 600,
        isWatermark: false
    }
    
    var templateHtml = fs.readFileSync(path.join(process.cwd(), 'invoice.html'), 'utf8');
    var template = handlebars.compile(templateHtml);
    var finalHtml = template(dataBinding);
    var options = {
        format: 'A4',
        headerTemplate: "<p></p>",
        footerTemplate: "<p></p>",
        displayHeaderFooter: false,
        margin: {
            top: "40px",
            bottom: "100px"
        },
        printBackground: true,
        path: 'invoice.pdf'
    }

    const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
        args: ['--no-sandbox'],
        headless: true
    });
    const page = await browser.newPage();
    await page.goto(`data: text/html,${finalHtml}`, {
        waitUntil: 'networkidle0'
    });
    await page.pdf(options);
    await browser.close();
})();

How to display paid stamp watermark on the invoice?

Using handlebars to check param isWatermark

  {{#if isWatermark}}
    <div style="border-width: 6px;border-style: solid; border-color: #008000;border-radius: 8px; color: #008000; opacity:0.6; position: absolute; z-index: 1; left:40%; top:30%; font-size: 60pt;-webkit-transform: rotate(-45deg);-ms-transform: rotate(-45deg);transform: rotate(-45deg); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Helvetica', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">
        PAID </div>
    {{/if}}

Change isWatermark: true and run node pdf.js again

Invoice with stamp paid watermark

You can find the source code at Github

Thanks for reading and happy sharing