API to transform given html to a PDF file
On a project for a client, we needed to create a PDF and send a mail with it as an attachment. We could have used pdfKit or something similar, but it is really difficult to have a clean and maintainable code. I would like to have only HTML and CSS to maintain. Yes, I could have used wkhtmltopdf, but from node.js, it would involve spawning processes to run shell commands, and I didn't like that.
Here is what a client could look like
const options = {
hostname: 'localhost',
port: 7000,
path: '/api/v1/html2pdf',
method: 'POST',
headers: {
'Accept': 'application/pdf',
'Content-Type': 'application/json'
},
}
const req = http.request(options, function (res) {
res.on('data', function (data) {
writableStream.write(data)
}).on('end', function () {
writableStream.end()
})
})
req.on('error', (e) => {
reject(`Problem with request: ${e.message}`)
})
req.write(postData)
req.end()// reusable-client.js
const http = require('http')
const fs = require('fs')
const DOWNLOAD_DIR = process.env.DOWNLOAD_DIR || './'
const options = {
hostname: 'localhost',
port: 7000,
path: '/api/v1/html2pdf',
method: 'POST',
headers: {
'Accept': 'application/pdf',
'Content-Type': 'application/json'
},
}
// Returns a Promise<WritableStream>
const getPdfFromHtml = (html, filename = 'Document.pdf') => {
const file = fs.createWriteStream(DOWNLOAD_DIR + filename)
const postData = JSON.stringify({
filename,
html,
})
return new Promise ((resolve, reject) => {
const req = http.request(options, function (res) {
res.on('data', function (data) {
file.write(data)
}).on('end', function () {
file.end()
resolve(file)
})
})
req.on('error', (e) => {
reject(`Problem with request: ${e.message}`)
})
req.write(postData)
req.end()
})
}
module.exports = getPdfFromHtml
// app.js
const getPdfFromHtml = require('./reusable-client.js')
getPdfFromHtml({
filename: 'test.pdf',
html: `<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>
Hello World
</title>
<style>
h1 {
text-decoration: underline;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>
Hello World from an HTML file!
</h1>
</body>
</html>
`
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