PDFer

A basic API tool that creates PDFs from HTML or a URL.

This application is currently live at:
https://pdfer.codeadam.ca

This tool uses a basic Laravel app with Browsershot and Puppeteer to generate PDFs. Here are the steps to create a new Google Cloud E2 server and install the necessary libraries.

Login to the GCP Console and create a new E2 server using Ubuntu 22 LTS x86/64. Open HTTP and HTTPS in the Networking tab.
Change the IP address to a static IP.
Open up the GCP SSH tool and run a few update and upgrade commands:
```
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt autoremove
```
Install Apache using these commannds:
```
sudo apt install apt-utils 
sudo apt install apache2 apache2-utils
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2enmod ssl
sudo service apache2 restart
```
At this point you can enter your IP address (use http://) into a browser and you should see the default Apache page:
Using a terminal (Mac) create an SSH key:
```
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C username
```
Add the public key to the Google Cloud Platform Metadata.

Setup a new FileZilla SFTP connection. Add the IP address, username, and privat key file. Add the new user from the new SSH key to the www-data user group. Change any contents of the /var/www/ folder to have user write permissions using 0775`.

Install and configure MySQL:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server
sudo mysql_secure_installation

sudo mysql

ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY "password";
exit

Insall PHP:

sudo apt update
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/apache2
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt install php8.3

And all required PHP libraries:

sudo apt-get install -y php8.3-cli php8.3-common php8.3-mysql php8.3-zip php8.3-gd
sudo apt-get install -y php8.3-mbstring php8.3-curl php8.3-xml php8.3-bcmath

Install Composer:

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer -o /tmp/composer-setup.php
sudo php /tmp/composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

And confirm Composer is installed:

composer --version

Install GIT:

sudo apt install git-all
sudo apt-get install install-info

And comfirm Git is installed:

git --version

Change the server password:

sudo passwd
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

And reboot:

sudo reboot

Install Webmin:

curl -fsSL https://download.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/webmin.gpg

Then open up the sources.list file:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

And add this lkine to the ver bottom:

deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/webmin.gpg] http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib

And intall Webmin:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install webmin

Open up port 10000:

sudo ufw allow 10000

And open port 10000 in the VPC Network GCP console.

Reboot the server:

sudo reboot

Clone the PDFer repo:
```
sudo git clone https://github.com/codeadamca/pdfer
```
Remove binary references from the PdfController.

Change ownership to Google user: thomasadam83

Rename folder to pffer.codeadam.ca Point virtual servers to public folder
Virtual Servers

Using Wemin add two new servers for the domin on 80 and 443.

Install an SSL using LedtsEncrypt:

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache  
sudo certbot

Error reporting:
```
/etc/php/8.3/apache2/php.ini
Line 518: display_errors = On
```
Restart Apache using sudo service apache2 restart.

Ad a virtual host using Webmin:

Port 80:

<Directory "/var/www/academicintegrity.codeadam.ca">
    allow from all
    Require all granted
    AllowOverride All
</Directory>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =academicintegrity.codeadam.ca
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]

Port 443:

<Directory /var/www/pdfer.codeadam.ca/public>
    AllowOverride All
    Options None
    Require all granted
</Directory>
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/pdfer.codeadam.ca/fullchain.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/pdfer.codeadam.ca/privkey.pem
Include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf

Install Composer php libraries:
```
composer install
```
Add a .env file for the application and make the following changes:
```
DB_CONNECTION=null
SESSION_DRIVER=file
```
Generate an application key:
```
php artisan key:generate
```

Istall NVM:

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/how-to-install-nvm-on-ubuntu-22-04/

sudo apt-get update

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.1/install.sh | bash

Terminal must are restarted

nvm --version

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion"

nvm install --lts

cd /var/www/pdfer.codeadam.ca  
npm i
npm audit fix

Change permissions.

Add www-data to thomasadam83 group Change ownership of storage folder to www-data recursively

Add npm and node to paths

n=$(which node);n=${n%/bin/node}; chmod -R 755 $n/bin/*; sudo cp -r $n/{bin,lib,share} /usr/local

sudo reboot

Install Puppeteer and dependencies:

sudo apt install ca-certificates fonts-liberation libasound2 libatk-bridge2.0-0 libatk1.0-0 libc6 libcairo2 libcups2 libdbus-1-3 libexpat1 libfontconfig1 libgbm1 libgcc1 libglib2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libnspr4 libnss3 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 libstdc++6 libx11-6 libx11-xcb1 libxcb1 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxext6 libxfixes3 libxi6 libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxss1 libxtst6 lsb-release wget xdg-utils

sudo npm install --location=global --unsafe-perm puppeteer --ignore-scripts

// npx puppeteer browsers install chrome // sudo apt-get -y chromium-browser

cd /var/www/pdfer.codeadam.ca npx puppeteer browsers install npx puppeteer browsers install chrome

Change caching folder

touch .puppeteerrc.cjs nano .puppeteerrc.cjs

const {join} = require('path');

/**
 * @type {import("puppeteer").Configuration}
 */
module.exports = {
    // Changes the cache location for Puppeteer.
    cacheDirectory: join(__dirname, '.cache', 'puppeteer'),
};

Project Stack

This project uses PHP, Laravel, and Browsershot.

codeadamca/pdfer

PDFer

Project Stack

Repo Resources