ahmedshabib / html-to-pdf-node-chrome

Node express app to convert html to pdf using google chrome headless

Node express App to convert HTML to PDF using Google Chrome Headless

This project creates a express wrapper around https://github.com/westy92/html-pdf-chrome .

Prerequisites

• Chrome/Chromium 59 or higher (60 or higher for some features). You can install latest chrome stable version as follow.

sudo apt-get install libxss1 libappindicator1 libindicator7
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i google-chrome*.deb

#if you encounter an error while installing run
sudo apt-get install -f

• Windows(limited), macOS, or Linux
• Node.js v6 or later

Usage

Note: It is strongly recommended that you keep Chrome running side-by-side with Node.js. There is significant overhead starting up Chrome for each PDF generation which can be easily avoided.

It's suggested to use pm2 to ensure Chrome continues to run. If it crashes, it will restart automatically.

As of this writing, headless Chrome uses about 65mb of RAM while idle.

# First clone the repository 
git clone https://github.com/ahmedshabib/html-to-pdf-node-chrome html-to-pdf
cd html-to-pdf
npm install

# install pm2 globally
npm install -g pm2
# start Chrome and be sure to specify a port to use in the html-pdf-chrome options.
pm2 start google-chrome \
  --interpreter none \
  -- \
  --headless \
  --disable-gpu \
  --disable-translate \
  --disable-extensions \
  --disable-background-networking \
  --safebrowsing-disable-auto-update \
  --disable-sync \
  --metrics-recording-only \
  --disable-default-apps \
  --no-first-run \
  --remote-debugging-port=9222
# run your Node.js app.

pm2 start index.js

Example Test

curl 'localhost:3000' -H 'accept: application/json, text/plain, */*' -H 'content-type: application/json' --data-binary '{"content":"<p>Hello World</p>"}' > test.pdf