PDFKit is a JavaScript library for generating PDF documents, allowing you to create multi-page documents with text, images, vector graphics, and more. It is highly customizable and can be used both in Node.js and browser environments.
Text
This feature allows you to add text to your PDF document. The code sample demonstrates how to create a PDF document and add a 'Hello, World!' text at coordinates (100, 100) with a font size of 25.
const PDFDocument = require('pdfkit');
const fs = require('fs');
const doc = new PDFDocument();
doc.pipe(fs.createWriteStream('output.pdf'));
doc.fontSize(25).text('Hello, World!', 100, 100);
doc.end();Images
This feature allows you to add images to your PDF document. The code sample demonstrates how to add an image to the PDF at coordinates (100, 150) with a width of 300 units.
const PDFDocument = require('pdfkit');
const fs = require('fs');
const doc = new PDFDocument();
doc.pipe(fs.createWriteStream('output.pdf'));
doc.image('path/to/image.png', 100, 150, {width: 300});
doc.end();Vector Graphics
This feature allows you to draw vector graphics such as rectangles, circles, and lines. The code sample demonstrates how to draw a red rectangle at coordinates (100, 100) with a width and height of 200 units.
const PDFDocument = require('pdfkit');
const fs = require('fs');
const doc = new PDFDocument();
doc.pipe(fs.createWriteStream('output.pdf'));
doc.rect(100, 100, 200, 200).fill('#FF0000');
doc.end();Tables
This feature allows you to create tables within your PDF document. The code sample demonstrates how to create a simple table with headers and rows.
const PDFDocument = require('pdfkit');
const fs = require('fs');
const doc = new PDFDocument();
doc.pipe(fs.createWriteStream('output.pdf'));
doc.text('Table Example', 100, 50);
doc.moveDown();
const table = {
headers: ['Header 1', 'Header 2', 'Header 3'],
rows: [
['Row 1 Col 1', 'Row 1 Col 2', 'Row 1 Col 3'],
['Row 2 Col 1', 'Row 2 Col 2', 'Row 2 Col 3'],
]
};
doc.table(table, {width: 500});
doc.end();Links
This feature allows you to add hyperlinks to your PDF document. The code sample demonstrates how to add a clickable link that directs to Google's website.
const PDFDocument = require('pdfkit');
const fs = require('fs');
const doc = new PDFDocument();
doc.pipe(fs.createWriteStream('output.pdf'));
doc.text('Click here to visit Google', 100, 100).link(100, 100, 160, 27, 'http://www.google.com');
doc.end();pdf-lib is a library for creating and modifying PDF documents in JavaScript. It is similar to PDFKit but offers a more modern API and additional features like form filling and annotation. It is also designed to work in both Node.js and browser environments.
jsPDF is a popular library for generating PDF documents in JavaScript. It is often used for client-side PDF generation in web applications. Compared to PDFKit, jsPDF is more focused on simplicity and ease of use, making it a good choice for basic PDF generation tasks.
pdfmake is a library for generating PDF documents in JavaScript. It uses a declarative approach to document creation, making it easy to define complex layouts. Compared to PDFKit, pdfmake is more focused on layout and styling, making it a good choice for creating well-formatted documents.
A JavaScript PDF generation library for Node and the browser.
PDFKit is a PDF document generation library for Node and the browser that makes creating complex, multi-page, printable documents easy. It's written in CoffeeScript, but you can choose to use the API in plain 'ol JavaScript if you like. The API embraces chainability, and includes both low level functions as well as abstractions for higher level functionality. The PDFKit API is designed to be simple, so generating complex documents is often as simple as a few function calls.
Check out some of the documentation and examples to see for yourself! You can also read the guide as a self-generated PDF with example output displayed inline. If you'd like to see how it was generated, check out the README in the docs folder.
You can also try out an interactive in-browser demo of PDFKit here.
Installation uses the npm package manager. Just type the following command after installing npm.
npm install pdfkit
PDFDocument = require 'pdfkit'
# Create a document
doc = new PDFDocument
# Pipe its output somewhere, like to a file or HTTP response
# See below for browser usage
doc.pipe fs.createWriteStream('output.pdf')
# Embed a font, set the font size, and render some text
doc.font('fonts/PalatinoBold.ttf')
.fontSize(25)
.text('Some text with an embedded font!', 100, 100)
# Add an image, constrain it to a given size, and center it vertically and horizontally
doc.image('path/to/image.png', {
fit: [250, 300],
align: 'center',
valign: 'center'
});
# Add another page
doc.addPage()
.fontSize(25)
.text('Here is some vector graphics...', 100, 100)
# Draw a triangle
doc.save()
.moveTo(100, 150)
.lineTo(100, 250)
.lineTo(200, 250)
.fill("#FF3300")
# Apply some transforms and render an SVG path with the 'even-odd' fill rule
doc.scale(0.6)
.translate(470, -380)
.path('M 250,75 L 323,301 131,161 369,161 177,301 z')
.fill('red', 'even-odd')
.restore()
# Add some text with annotations
doc.addPage()
.fillColor("blue")
.text('Here is a link!', 100, 100)
.underline(100, 100, 160, 27, color: "#0000FF")
.link(100, 100, 160, 27, 'http://google.com/')
# Finalize PDF file
doc.end()
The PDF output from this example (with a few additions) shows the power of PDFKit — producing
complex documents with a very small amount of code. For more, see the demo folder and the
PDFKit programming guide.
There are two ways to use PDFKit in the browser. The first is to use Browserify,
which is a Node module packager for the browser with the familiar require syntax. The second is to use
a prebuilt version of PDFKit, which you can download from Github.
In addition to PDFKit, you'll need somewhere to stream the output to. HTML5 has a Blob object which can be used to store binary data, and get URLs to this data in order to display PDF output inside an iframe, or upload to a server, etc. In order to get a Blob from the output of PDFKit, you can use the blob-stream module.
The following example uses Browserify to load PDFKit and blob-stream, but if you're not using Browserify,
you can load them in whatever way you'd like (e.g. script tags).
# require dependencies
PDFDocument = require 'pdfkit'
blobStream = require 'blob-stream'
# create a document the same way as above
doc = new PDFDocument
# pipe the document to a blob
stream = doc.pipe(blobStream())
# add your content to the document here, as usual
# get a blob when you're done
doc.end()
stream.on 'finish', ->
# get a blob you can do whatever you like with
blob = stream.toBlob('application/pdf')
# or get a blob URL for display in the browser
url = stream.toBlobURL('application/pdf')
iframe.src = url
You can see an interactive in-browser demo of PDFKit here.
Note that in order to Browserify a project using PDFKit, you need to install the brfs module with npm,
which is used to load built-in font data into the package. It is listed as a devDependency in
PDFKit's package.json, so it isn't installed by default for Node users.
If you forget to install it, Browserify will print an error message.
For complete API documentation and more examples, see the PDFKit website.
PDFKit is available under the MIT license.
FAQs
A PDF generation library for Node.js
The npm package pdfkit receives a total of 632,698 weekly downloads. As such, pdfkit popularity was classified as popular.
We found that pdfkit demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 4 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
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