Generating a PDF file from React Components

Question

I have been building a polling application. People are able to create their polls and get data regarding the question(s) they ask. I would like to add the functionality to let the users download the results in the form of a PDF.

For example I have two components which are responsible for grabbing the question and data.

<QuestionBox />
<ViewCharts />

I'm attempting to output both components into a PDF file. The user can then download this PFD file. I have found a few packages that permit the rendering of a PDF inside a component. However I failed to find one that can generate PDF from an input stream consisting of a virtual DOM. If I want to achieve this from scratch what approach should I follow ?

Solution 1

Rendering react as pdf is generally a pain, but there is a way around it using canvas.

The idea is to convert : HTML -> Canvas -> PNG (or JPEG) -> PDF

To achieve the above, you'll need :

1. html2canvas &
2. jsPDF

import React, {Component, PropTypes} from 'react';

// download html2canvas and jsPDF and save the files in app/ext, or somewhere else
// the built versions are directly consumable
// import {html2canvas, jsPDF} from 'app/ext';


export default class Export extends Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
  }

  printDocument() {
    const input = document.getElementById('divToPrint');
    html2canvas(input)
      .then((canvas) => {
        const imgData = canvas.toDataURL('image/png');
        const pdf = new jsPDF();
        pdf.addImage(imgData, 'JPEG', 0, 0);
        // pdf.output('dataurlnewwindow');
        pdf.save("download.pdf");
      })
    ;
  }

  render() {
    return (<div>
      <div className="mb5">
        <button onClick={this.printDocument}>Print</button>
      </div>
      <div id="divToPrint" className="mt4" {...css({
        backgroundColor: '#f5f5f5',
        width: '210mm',
        minHeight: '297mm',
        marginLeft: 'auto',
        marginRight: 'auto'
      })}>
        <div>Note: Here the dimensions of div are same as A4</div> 
        <div>You Can add any component here</div>
      </div>
    </div>);
  }
}

The snippet will not work here because the required files are not imported.

An alternate approach is being used in this answer, where the middle steps are dropped and you can simply convert from HTML to PDF. There is an option to do this in the jsPDF documentation as well, but from personal observation, I feel that better accuracy is achieved when dom is converted into png first.

Update 0: September 14, 2018

The text on the pdfs created by this approach will not be selectable. If that's a requirement, you might find this article helpful.

Solution 2

React-PDF is a great resource for this.

It is a bit time consuming converting your markup and CSS to React-PDF's format, but it is easy to understand. Exporting a PDF and from it is fairly straightforward.

To allow a user to download a PDF generated by react-PDF, use their on the fly rendering, which provides a customizable download link. When clicked, the site renders and downloads the PDF for the user.

Here's their REPL which will familiarize you with the markup and styling required. They have a download link for the PDF too, but they don't show the code for that here.

Solution 3

you can user canvans with jsPDF

import jsPDF from 'jspdf';
import html2canvas from 'html2canvas';

 _exportPdf = () => {

     html2canvas(document.querySelector("#capture")).then(canvas => {
        document.body.appendChild(canvas);  // if you want see your screenshot in body.
        const imgData = canvas.toDataURL('image/png');
        const pdf = new jsPDF();
        pdf.addImage(imgData, 'PNG', 0, 0);
        pdf.save("download.pdf"); 
    });

 }

and you div with id capture is:

example

<div id="capture">
  <p>Hello in my life</p>
  <span>How can hellp you</span>
</div>

Solution 4

Only few steps. We can download or generate PDF from our HTML page or we can generate PDF of specific div from a HTML page.

Steps : HTML -> Image (PNG or JPEG) -> PDF

Please Follow the below steps,

Step 1 :-

npm install --save html-to-image
npm install jspdf --save

Step 2 :-

/* ES6 */
import * as htmlToImage from 'html-to-image';
import { toPng, toJpeg, toBlob, toPixelData, toSvg } from 'html-to-image';
 
/* ES5 */
var htmlToImage = require('html-to-image');

-------------------------
import { jsPDF } from "jspdf";

Step 3 :-

   ******  With out PDF properties given below  ******

 htmlToImage.toPng(document.getElementById('myPage'), { quality: 0.95 })
        .then(function (dataUrl) {
          var link = document.createElement('a');
          link.download = 'my-image-name.jpeg';
          const pdf = new jsPDF();          
          pdf.addImage(dataUrl, 'PNG', 0, 0);
          pdf.save("download.pdf"); 
        });


    ******  With PDF properties given below ******

    htmlToImage.toPng(document.getElementById('myPage'), { quality: 0.95 })
        .then(function (dataUrl) {
          var link = document.createElement('a');
          link.download = 'my-image-name.jpeg';
          const pdf = new jsPDF();
          const imgProps= pdf.getImageProperties(dataUrl);
          const pdfWidth = pdf.internal.pageSize.getWidth();
          const pdfHeight = (imgProps.height * pdfWidth) / imgProps.width;
          pdf.addImage(dataUrl, 'PNG', 0, 0,pdfWidth, pdfHeight);
          pdf.save("download.pdf"); 
        });

I think this is helpful. Please try

Solution 5

You can use ReactDOMServer to render your component to HTML and then use this on jsPDF.

First do the imports:

import React from "react";
import ReactDOMServer from "react-dom/server";
import jsPDF from 'jspdf';

then:

var doc = new jsPDF();
doc.fromHTML(ReactDOMServer.renderToStaticMarkup(this.render()));
doc.save("myDocument.pdf");

Prefer to use:

renderToStaticMarkup

instead of:

renderToString

As the former include HTML code that react relies on.

View more solutions

Comments

[Keyur Android]

I have successfully created a PDF file from an html page with the help of your answer. But if we want to create a PDF with multiple pages then what to do? with a4 size page with appropriate margins at all sides and in each new page that margin should be applied. please help me its argent. Thank you in advance. I have created a question here question

[Shivek Khurana]

Same thing. Position your content in a list of divs. Each div represents an a4 sheet (add css to the div to replicate margins). Then run the print function on each div.

[André Almeida]

@ShivekKhurana my div changes acording to the size of the screen, but I'd like the PDF file to be always the same, not depending on window size. Is there anyway I can do that? Also, how do i import {...css} ?

[Goutham]

By this method can the text on created pdf be copied ?

[smonff]

@Goutham the answer is no: the content of the PDF is a bitmap image

[Jaison James]

This method is not working if included an image in the div. any solution text along with image?

[Matt Saunders]

This works, but the PDF that is generated appears massively zoomed in to the top-left corner. Any ideas why this might be the case?

[Shivek Khurana]

@Matt maybe try setting the dimensions of the parent div in millimeters.

[Matt Saunders]

@ShivekKhurana I'm not sure what you mean. Could this be because I'm on a Mac with a retina screen? Screenshots are always really big because of the resolution...

[Nacho Justicia Ramos]

You can try this codesandbox that I have created to generate a PDF file from React component: codesandbox.io/s/20qpkznx3p

[Simon Hutchison]

Looked interesting, but renderToStaticMarkup doesnt return any styling, so as far as I can tell jsPDF simply renders some default layout of the raw html unless there is some way to inject css classes?

[Matias Faure]

@Felix the HTML string allows for <style> tags so you'd have to write CSS inline.

[Dworo]

This only allows displaying of PDFs not converting DOM to PDFs? Correct me if i'm wrong please

[Vikash Kumar]

this doesn't convert it in pdf for download. Its just a viewer.

[YTG]

super easy and clean solution! thanx @ShivekKhurana :) (btw i think addImage accepts either 1/8 arguments.)

[Micah B.]

Why did you add a copy of the answer?

[Vijay Gaikwad]

ReactPDF is a viewer, it allows displaying PDF on DOM.

[Greko2015 GuFn]

The image quality isn't good, and with a4 side part of the generated Pdf is cut, this result is the same with both react-to-pdf and jdpdf library

[imran haider]

The only problem with this solution is that it will capture the whole image of the div but will generate pdf with part of that - not the complete. specially when the div is too wide. easy fix is to replace two line. one is the jspdf constructor line const pdf = new jsPDF('p', 'pt', 'a4', false); and second will be pasting image on pdf line pdf.addImage(imgData, 'PNG', 0, 0, 600, 0, undefined, false);. if you want to adjust the width or height of captured image in pdf then play with 5th parameter of addImage function. Go NUTS :P

[Peter Collingridge]

Is the link and link.download necessary?

[Admin]

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[Kousalya]

@ShivekKhurana how to use above code in react typescript project?