PDFKit

A JavaScript PDF generation library for Node and the browser.

Description

PDFKit is a PDF document generation library for Node and the browser that makes creating complex, multi-page, printable documents easy. The API embraces chainability, and includes both low level functions as well as abstractions for higher level functionality. The PDFKit API is designed to be simple, so generating complex documents is often as simple as a few function calls.

Check out some of the documentation and examples to see for yourself! You can also read the guide as a self-generated PDF with example output displayed inline. If you'd like to see how it was generated, check out the README in the docs folder.

You can also try out an interactive in-browser demo of PDFKit here.

Installation

Use npm or yarn package manager. Just type the following command:

# with npm
npm install pdfkit

# with yarn
yarn add pdfkit

Features

• Vector graphics
  • HTML5 canvas-like API
  • Path operations
  • SVG path parser for easy path creation
  • Transformations
  • Linear and radial gradients
• Text
  • Line wrapping (with soft hyphen recognition)
  • Text alignments
  • Bulleted lists
• Font embedding
  • Supports TrueType (.ttf), OpenType (.otf), WOFF, WOFF2, TrueType Collections (.ttc), and Datafork TrueType (.dfont) fonts
  • Font subsetting
  • See fontkit for more details on advanced glyph layout support.
• Image embedding
  • Supports JPEG and PNG files (including indexed PNGs, and PNGs with transparency)
• Tables
• Annotations
  • Links
  • Notes
  • Highlights
  • Underlines
  • etc.
• AcroForms
• Outlines
• PDF security
  • Encryption
  • Access privileges (printing, copying, modifying, annotating, form filling, content accessibility, document assembly)
• Accessibility support (marked content, logical structure, Tagged PDF, PDF/UA)

Coming soon!

• Patterns fills
• Higher level APIs for laying out content
• More performance optimizations
• Even more awesomeness, perhaps written by you! Please fork this repository and send me pull requests.

Example

Both const PDFDocument = require('pdfkit') and import PDFDocument from 'pdfkit' remain supported for backward compatibility. New code should prefer the named PDFDocument export, which will make a future migration to an ESM-only package more straightforward.

const { PDFDocument } = require('pdfkit');
const fs = require('fs');

// Create a document
const doc = new PDFDocument();

// Pipe its output somewhere, like to a file or HTTP response
// See below for browser usage
doc.pipe(fs.createWriteStream('output.pdf'));

// Embed a font, set the font size, and render some text
doc
  .font('fonts/PalatinoBold.ttf')
  .fontSize(25)
  .text('Some text with an embedded font!', 100, 100);

// Add an image, constrain it to a given size, and center it vertically and horizontally
doc.image('path/to/image.png', {
  fit: [250, 300],
  align: 'center',
  valign: 'center'
});

// Add another page
doc
  .addPage()
  .fontSize(25)
  .text('Here is some vector graphics...', 100, 100);

// Draw a triangle
doc
  .save()
  .moveTo(100, 150)
  .lineTo(100, 250)
  .lineTo(200, 250)
  .fill('#FF3300');

// Apply some transforms and render an SVG path with the 'even-odd' fill rule
doc
  .scale(0.6)
  .translate(470, -380)
  .path('M 250,75 L 323,301 131,161 369,161 177,301 z')
  .fill('red', 'even-odd')
  .restore();

// Add some text with annotations
doc
  .addPage()
  .fillColor('blue')
  .text('Here is a link!', 100, 100)
  .underline(100, 100, 160, 27, { color: '#0000FF' })
  .link(100, 100, 160, 27, 'http://google.com/');

// Finalize PDF file
doc.end();

The PDF output from this example (with a few additions) shows the power of PDFKit — producing complex documents with a very small amount of code. For more, see the demo folder and the PDFKit programming guide.

Browser Usage

There are three ways to use PDFKit in the browser:

• Use Browserify. See demo source code and build script
• Use webpack. See complete example.
• Use prebuilt version. Distributed as pdfkit.standalone.js file in the releases or in the package js folder.

In addition to PDFKit, you'll need to collect its output. Browsers provide a Blob object for storing binary data and creating URLs that can be displayed in an iframe, downloaded or uploaded.

Experimental output helpers

PDFKit provides experimental toBlob and toBytes helpers from pdfkit/output. These functions may change before they are stabilized. Call the selected helper before ending the document so it receives the complete output.

Use toBlob when displaying, downloading or uploading the PDF in a browser:

import { PDFDocument, registerStdFonts } from 'pdfkit';
import Helvetica from 'pdfkit/standard-fonts/Helvetica';
import HelveticaBold from 'pdfkit/standard-fonts/HelveticaBold';
import { toBlob } from 'pdfkit/output';

registerStdFonts(Helvetica, HelveticaBold);
const doc = new PDFDocument();
const output = toBlob(doc);

// Add your content to the document here, as usual.

doc.end();
const blob = await output;
const url = URL.createObjectURL(blob);
iframe.src = url;

// Revoke the URL when the iframe no longer needs the PDF.
// URL.revokeObjectURL(url);

Use toBytes instead when a binary API, worker or parser needs one contiguous Uint8Array:

import { toBytes } from 'pdfkit/output';

const output = toBytes(doc);
doc.end();
const bytes = await output;

The stable, dependency-free alternative is to collect the document's Uint8Array chunks using its events and construct the Blob directly:

const chunks = [];

doc.on('data', chunk => chunks.push(chunk));
doc.on('end', () => {
  const blob = new Blob(chunks, { type: 'application/pdf' });
  const url = URL.createObjectURL(blob);
  iframe.src = url;
});

// Add your content to the document here, as usual.
doc.end();

You can see an interactive in-browser demo of PDFKit here.

The browser build has no access to the file system. You can register a Uint8Array under a path before passing that exact path to registerFont, image or file:

import { PDFDocument, registerFile } from 'pdfkit';

const response = await fetch('/fonts/Roboto-Regular.ttf');
const fontData = new Uint8Array(await response.arrayBuffer());

registerFile('fonts/Roboto-Regular.ttf', fontData);

const doc = new PDFDocument();

// register an alias for the font path
doc.registerFont('Roboto', 'fonts/Roboto-Regular.ttf');
// or use the path directly
doc.font('fonts/Roboto-Regular.ttf');

// Optionally unregister the path when it is no longer needed.
registerFile('fonts/Roboto-Regular.ttf', undefined);

Registration is global to the loaded PDFKit module. Registering the same path again replaces its data. In Node, registered data takes precedence over a file at the same path; unregistering it restores normal file system lookup. Both APIs are available as named exports from the CommonJS entry point:

const { PDFDocument, registerFile } = require('pdfkit');

registerFile('files/example.txt', new Uint8Array([1, 2, 3]), {
  birthtime: new Date('2020-01-02T03:04:05Z'),
  ctime: new Date('2021-02-03T04:05:06Z'),
});
registerFile('files/example.txt', undefined);

registerFile accepts only a Uint8Array or undefined. You can still pass a Uint8Array or ArrayBuffer directly to registerFont, image and file, and you can pass a data URL directly to image and file. An unregistered file path throws in the browser. The optional birthtime and ctime values must be valid Date objects; either omitted value defaults to the time of registration.

Documentation

For complete API documentation and more examples, see the PDFKit website.

License

PDFKit is available under the MIT license.