{"id":14279,"date":"2014-06-27T12:00:32","date_gmt":"2014-06-27T06:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/?p=14279"},"modified":"2016-12-15T23:57:05","modified_gmt":"2016-12-15T18:27:05","slug":"generate-pdf-in-nodejs-using-node-phantom-module","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/generate-pdf-in-nodejs-using-node-phantom-module\/","title":{"rendered":"Generate PDF in NodeJS using “node-phantom” module"},"content":{"rendered":"

PhantomJS<\/strong> is used to emulate browsers through command line, for generating PDFs, web page manipulation, headless testing and much more interesting stuff.<\/p>\n

Npm provides us a module called “node-phantom”<\/strong> which helps us to use PhantomJS in our NodeJS application<\/a> in a non-fussy way. A prerequisite for using this module is, you must have PhantomJS binary installed on your system.<\/p>\n

Then you have to run npm install node-phantom<\/code> and require the module var phantom = require('node-phantom')<\/code> in your application.<\/p>\n

Let us consider a code snippet which make use of this module for generating PDF:<\/p>\n

[js]
\nvar html = ejs.render(htmlFileContent,
\n {seller: "Sakshi Tyagi", buyer: "Test Buyer"});
\n phantom.create(function (error, ph) {
\n ph.createPage(function (error, page) {
\n page.settings = {
\n loadImages: true,
\n localToRemoteUrlAccessEnabled: true,
\n javascriptEnabled: true,
\n loadPlugins: false
\n };
\n page.set(‘viewportSize’, { width: 800, height: 600 });
\n page.set(‘paperSize’, { format: ‘A4’, orientation: ‘portrait’, border: ‘1cm’ });
\n page.set(‘content’, html, function (error) {
\n if (error) {
\n console.log(‘Error setting content: ‘, error);
\n }
\n });<\/p>\n

page.onResourceRequested = function (rd, req) {
\n console.log("REQUESTING: ", rd[0]["url"]);
\n }
\n page.onResourceReceived = function (rd) {
\n rd.stage == "end" && console.log("LOADED: ", rd["url"]);
\n }
\n page.onLoadFinished = function (status) {
\n page.render(url, function (error) {
\n if (error) console.log(‘Error rendering PDF: %s’, error);
\n console.log("PDF GENERATED : ", status);
\n ph.exit();
\n cb && cb();
\n });
\n }
\n });
\n });
\n[\/js]<\/p>\n

Here, we first get the html content we want to display on pdf. “ejs”<\/strong> templating engine is used to render this html we have in “htmlFileContent”<\/strong> variable. Next, we start with<\/p>\n

Next, we start with create(callback)<\/strong> method in which we get two parameters error and an object of phantomJS. Method “createPage”<\/strong> is called to create a webpage. It returns us the page object on which we can call several functions and set properties like:<\/p>\n

1. page.settings :<\/strong> For setting values for enabling and disabling various
\nproperties for example: javascriptEnabled, localToRemoteUrlAccessEnabled etc.
\n2. page.onResourceRequested() :<\/strong> For tracking the request, when a page requests a resource from a remote server.
\n3. page.onResourceReceived() :<\/strong> For tracking the response similarly.
\n4. page.onLoadFinished() :<\/strong> For debugging, to see if the requested resource is generated or not. Called when resource is loaded and return status.
\n5. page.set() :<\/strong> This method is a useful one, as it allow us to set values for various configuration variables for page for example “viewportSize”, “paperSize” and most important “content”.<\/p>\n

Once the page or pdf generation is done, we call ph.exit()<\/strong> to terminate the pdf generation.<\/p>\n

So, this was a very simple example of using the power, PhantomJS provides us with our NodeJS application.<\/p>\n

Thanks \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PhantomJS is used to emulate browsers through command line, for generating PDFs, web page manipulation, headless testing and much more interesting stuff. Npm provides us a module called “node-phantom” which helps us to use PhantomJS in our NodeJS application in a non-fussy way. A prerequisite for using this module is, you must have PhantomJS binary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":8},"categories":[1185],"tags":[55,1449,1124,1303,292,1227],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14279"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}