BreezyPDF Lite: HTML to PDF generation as a Service

Submit a slug of HTML, get a Google Chrome rendered PDF back.

A quick to stand up HTML to PDF service powered by headless Google Chrome. Deploy with one click and start generating PDF's from your web application or command line.

Looking for something more robust?

BreezyPDF Lite was extracted from BreezyPDF as a light weight alternative for new apps. As your software grows, a 1:1 server instance/render ratio will become slow and limiting.

See BreezyPDF.com for Hosted and Enterprise versions which prioritize performance, redundancy, and usability.

Getting Started

1. Submit HTML to be converted

This is done with a POST request the the web server. We'll use some example HTML for this example.

  curl -X POST -H 'Authorization: Bearer PRIVATE_TOKEN_DEFINED_IN_SERVER_ENVIRONMENT' \
    http://url-of-your-breezy-pdf-lite-server/render/html \
    -d "`curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/danielwestendorf/breezy-pdf-lite/master/sample.html`" \
    -o example.pdf

This will create the PDF in the current directory by the name of example.pdf.

2. Configure with `meta` tags (optional)

All configuration for the rendering of your PDF can be configured by meta tags within the HTML you submit. Simply insert the needed meta tag into the head or body of the HTML.

  <meta name="breezy-pdf-width" content="10">

Tag name	Default Value	Description
breezy-pdf-width	8.5	PDF page width in inches
breezy-pdf-height	11	PDF page height in inches
breezy-pdf-cssPageSize	false	Use page size defined by CSS
breezy-pdf-marginTop	0.4	Top margin
breezy-pdf-landscape	false	Print in landscape mode

View the all the configuration options and their documentation here.

2.a Print Options

There are a number of options for how you want the PDF to be rendered, including height, width, margins, footers, and headers.

2.b Completion Triggers

You might be rendering a Javascript heavy page, so it's helpful to let chrome know when the page is done rendering and ready to be converted to PDF. The default completion trigger is a timer of 5000ms.

Deployment

Heroku

Click the deployment button to get the system running on Heroku

Non-Heroku

Install node & yarn
yarn install
Set the Environment variables specified below
Start the web process node index.js

Configuration

Set the Environment/Heroku Config Vars

ENV Variable	Default Value	Description
PRIVATE_API_TOKEN	generated secret	A private key for accessing the API.

Set DEBUG Config var to breezy-pdf-lite:* to get debugged output.

Run Tests

$ /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/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 --mute-audio --hide-scrollbars --remote-debugging-port=9222

$ npm test

abhijitnandy/breezy-pdf-lite