Piston-printer NPM

Piston Printer is a node.js module for printing HTML templates to PDF.

It uses:

A headless Chromium process to render HTML templates and print to PDF
The Puppeteer library to automate the Chromium process
A localhost-facing instance of Express to render the HTML based on templates

Express is used to render HTML templates and to provide access to local assets like stylesheets, images, and fonts.

This makes it easy to use any template engine supported by Express, including template features like layouts/partials, and at the same time serve static files by just placing them in the assets directory.

Example

const PistonPrinter = require('piston-printer');

const printer = await PistonPrinter.initializePrinter({
    templatesDirectory: path.join(__dirname, '/templates'),
    assetsDirectory: path.join(__dirname, '/assets')
  });

const {pdf} = await printer.printTemplate('my-template.html');

Usage

interface IPistonPrinter {
    printTemplate(
      templateName: string,
      values: object // template values, also known as locals
      options: IPrinterOptions // see options below
    )
}

Template directories

Example directory structure:

assets/
templates/
- my-template.html

The contents of the assetsDirectory will be available to the rendered template under the /assets/ prefix.

A file located at {assetsDirectory}/style.css will be available in the page as /assets/style.css.

Print Options

interface IPrintOptions {
  width: string;
  height: string;
  margin: {
    top: string;
    bottom: string;
    left: string;
    right: string;
  }
}

Values should contain a CSS unit like px, pt, in, or cm.

Example: {width: '8.5in', height: '11in'}