pdfmake-node
Advanced tools
Client/server side PDF printing in pure JavaScript
Check out the playground
This document will walk you through the basics of pdfmake and will show you how to create PDF files in the browser. If you're interested in server-side printing check the examples folder.
To begin with the default configuration, you should include two files:
<!doctype html>
<html lang='en'>
<head>
<meta charset='utf-8'>
<title>my first pdfmake example</title>
<script src='build/pdfmake.min.js'></script>
<script src='build/vfs_fonts.js'></script>
</head>
<body>
...
You can get both files using bower:
bower install pdfmake
or copy them directly from the build directory from the repository. Otherwise you can always build it from sources.
pdfmake follows a declarative approach. It basically means, you'll never have to calculate positions manually or use commands like: writeText(text, x, y), moveDown etc..., as you would with a lot of other libraries.
The most fundamental concept to be mastered is the document-definition-object which can be as simple as:
var docDefinition = { content: 'This is an sample PDF printed with pdfMake' };
or become pretty complex (having multi-level tables, images, lists, paragraphs, margins, styles etc...).
As soon as you have the document-definition-object, you're ready to create and open/print/download the PDF:
// open the PDF in a new window
pdfMake.createPdf(docDefinition).open();
// print the PDF (not working in this version, will be added back in a couple of days)
// pdfMake.createPdf(docDefinition).print();
// download the PDF
pdfMake.createPdf(docDefinition).download();
pdfmake makes it possible to style any paragraph or its part:
var docDefinition = {
content: [
// if you don't need styles, you can use a simple string to define a paragraph
'This is a standard paragraph, using default style',
// using a { text: '...' } object lets you set styling properties
{ text: 'This paragraph will have a bigger font', fontSize: 15 },
// if you set the value of text to an array instead of a string, you'll be able
// to style any part individually
{
text: [
'This paragraph is defined as an array of elements to make it possible to ',
{ text: 'restyle part of it and make it bigger ', fontSize: 15 },
'than the rest.'
]
}
]
};
It's also possible to define a dictionary of reusable styles:
var docDefinition = {
content: [
{ text: 'This is a header', style: 'header' },
'No styling here, this is a standard paragraph',
{ text: 'Another text', style: 'anotherStyle' },
{ text: 'Multiple styles applied', style: [ 'header', 'anotherStyle' ] }
],
styles: {
header: {
fontSize: 22,
bold: true
},
anotherStyle: {
italics: true,
alignment: 'right'
}
}
};
To have a deeper understanding of styling in pdfmake, style inheritance and local-style-overrides check STYLES1, STYLES2 and STYLES3 examples in playground.
By default paragraphs are rendered as a vertical stack of elements (one below another). It is possible however to divide available space into columns.
var docDefinition = {
content: [
'This paragraph fills full width, as there are no columns. Next paragraph however consists of three columns',
{
columns: [
{
// auto-sized columns have their widths based on their content
width: 'auto',
text: 'First column'
},
{
// star-sized columns fill the remaining space
// if there's more than one star-column, available width is divided equally
width: '*',
text: 'Second column'
},
{
// fixed width
width: 100,
text: 'Third column'
},
{
// % width
width: '20%',
text: 'Fourth column'
}
],
// optional space between columns
columnGap: 10
},
'This paragraph goes below all columns and has full width'
]
};
Column content is not limited to a simple text. It can actually contain any valid pdfmake element. Make sure to look at the COLUMNS example in playground.
Conceptually tables are similar to columns. They can however have headers, borders and cells spanning over multiple columns/rows.
var docDefinition = {
content: [
{
table: {
// headers are automatically repeated if the table spans over multiple pages
// you can declare how many rows should be treated as headers
headerRows: 1,
widths: [ '*', 'auto', 100, '*' ],
body: [
[ 'First', 'Second', 'Third', 'The last one' ],
[ 'Value 1', 'Value 2', 'Value 3', 'Value 4' ],
[ { text: 'Bold value', bold: true }, 'Val 2', 'Val 3', 'Val 4' ]
]
}
}
]
};
All concepts related to tables are covered by TABLES example in playground.
pdfMake supports both numbered and bulleted lists:
var docDefinition = {
content: [
'Bulleted list example:',
{
// to treat a paragraph as a bulleted list, set an array of items under the ul key
ul: [
'Item 1',
'Item 2',
'Item 3',
{ text: 'Item 4', bold: true },
]
},
'Numbered list example:',
{
// for numbered lists set the ol key
ol: [
'Item 1',
'Item 2',
'Item 3'
]
}
]
};
Page headers and footers in pdfmake can be: static or dynamic.
They use the same syntax:
var docDefinition = {
header: 'simple text',
footer: {
columns: [
'Left part',
{ text: 'Right part', alignment: 'right' }
]
},
content: (...)
};
For dynamically generated content (including page numbers and page count) you can pass a function to the header or footer:
var docDefinition = {
footer: function(currentPage, pageCount) { return currentPage.toString() + ' of ' + pageCount; },
header: function(currentPage, pageCount) {
// you can apply any logic and return any valid pdfmake element
return { text: 'simple text', alignment: (currentPage % 2) ? 'left' : 'right' };
},
(...)
};
The background-layer will be added on every page.
var docDefinition = {
background: 'simple text',
content: (...)
};
It may contain any other object as well (images, tables, ...) or be dynamically generated:
var docDefinition = {
background: function(currentPage) {
return 'simple text on page ' + currentPage
},
content: (...)
};
Any element in pdfMake can have a margin:
(...)
// margin: [left, top, right, bottom]
{ text: 'sample', margin: [ 5, 2, 10, 20 ] },
// margin: [horizontal, vertical]
{ text: 'another text', margin: [5, 2] },
// margin: equalLeftTopRightBottom
{ text: 'last one', margin: 5 }
(...)
You could have figured out by now (from the examples), that if you set the content key to an array, the document becomes a stack of paragraphs.
You'll quite often reuse this structure in a nested element, like in the following example:
var docDefinition = {
content: [
'paragraph 1',
'paragraph 2',
{
columns: [
'first column is a simple text',
[
// second column consists of paragraphs
'paragraph A',
'paragraph B',
'these paragraphs will be rendered one below another inside the column'
]
]
}
]
};
The problem with an array is that you cannot add styling properties to it (to change fontSize for example).
The good news is - array is just a shortcut in pdfMake for { stack: [] }, so if you want to restyle the whole stack, you can do it using the expanded definition:
var docDefinition = {
content: [
'paragraph 1',
'paragraph 2',
{
columns: [
'first column is a simple text',
{
stack: [
// second column consists of paragraphs
'paragraph A',
'paragraph B',
'these paragraphs will be rendered one below another inside the column'
],
fontSize: 15
}
]
}
]
};
This is simple. Just use the { image: '...' } node type.
JPEG and PNG formats are supported.
var docDefinition = {
content: [
{
// you'll most often use dataURI images on the browser side
// if no width/height/fit is provided, the original size will be used
image: 'data:image/jpeg;base64,...encodedContent...'
},
{
// if you specify width, image will scale proportionally
image: 'data:image/jpeg;base64,...encodedContent...',
width: 150
},
{
// if you specify both width and height - image will be stretched
image: 'data:image/jpeg;base64,...encodedContent...',
width: 150,
height: 150
},
{
// you can also fit the image inside a rectangle
image: 'data:image/jpeg;base64,...encodedContent...',
fit: [100, 100]
},
{
// if you reuse the same image in multiple nodes,
// you should put it to to images dictionary and reference it by name
image: 'mySuperImage'
},
{
// under NodeJS (or in case you use virtual file system provided by pdfmake)
// you can also pass file names here
image: 'myImageDictionary/image1.jpg'
}
],
images: {
mySuperImage: 'data:image/jpeg;base64,...content...'
}
};
var docDefinition = {
// a string or { width: number, height: number }
pageSize: 'A5',
// by default we use portrait, you can change it to landscape if you wish
pageOrientation: 'landscape',
// [left, top, right, bottom] or [horizontal, vertical] or just a number for equal margins
pageMargins: [ 40, 60, 40, 60 ],
};
If you set pageSize to a string, you can use one of the following values:
To change page orientation within a document, add a page break with the new page orientation.
{
pageOrientation: 'portrait',
content: [
{text: 'Text on Portrait'},
{text: 'Text on Landscape', pageOrientation: 'landscape', pageBreak: 'before'},
{text: 'Text on Landscape 2', pageOrientation: 'portrait', pageBreak: 'after'},
{text: 'Text on Portrait 2'},
]
}
(From PdfKit Guide) PDF documents can have various metadata associated with them, such as the title, or author of the document. You can add that information by adding it to the document definition
var docDefinition = {
info: {
title: 'awesome Document',
author: 'john doe',
subject: 'subject of document',
keywords: 'keywords for document',
},
content: 'This is an sample PDF printed with pdfMake'
}
git clone https://github.com/pdfmake/pdfmake.git
cd pdfmake
npm install
git submodule update --init libs/FileSaver.js
gulp build
Hmmm... let me know what you need ;)
The goal is quite simple - make pdfmake useful for a looooooooot of people and help building responsive HTML5 apps with printing support.
There's one thing on the roadmap for v2 (no deadline however) - make the library hackable, so you can write plugins to:
MIT
pdfmake is based on a truly amazing library pdfkit.org - credits to @devongovett
big thanks to @yelouafi for making this library even better
FAQs
Client/server side PDF printing in pure JavaScript
We found that pdfmake-node demonstrated a not healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
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