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Dynamic HTML to PDF

Answer 1

A:

Try xhtml2pdf. Here's the project page at python.org.

ghoppe 2010-02-25 01:10:58

He wants a solution that will understand changes the page made by JavaScript.

Matthew Flaschen 2010-02-25 01:14:45

I can't see where I can test a live HTML page and it doesn't say much about javascript or dhtml.

vdh_ant 2010-02-25 01:15:09

Sorry, there is a link to the python project page for Pisa. I've changed my link.

ghoppe 2010-02-25 01:29:00

The question still remains... can it handle the case that I have described... i.e. dhtml generated via JavaScript on load...

vdh_ant 2010-02-25 04:02:04

Answer 2

A:

You could use a javascript URI to alert the current DOM. eg:

javascript:alert("<html>" + document.documentElement.innerHTML + "</html>")

Copy the HTML and save to a file.
Then run it through the HTML2PDF converter.

Sean Hogan 2010-02-25 01:42:13

It needs to be an automated process... i.e. the user clicks a button and they can download a report...

vdh_ant 2010-02-25 04:00:31

If you mean a button in the page (rather than the browser) then you obviously control the site so you can use XMLHttpRequest to POST the HTML to the server and run it through the converter on the server.

Sean Hogan 2010-02-27 23:12:03

Answer 3

+1 A:

There is no way it can be done. The interfaces available for scripts in PDF are extremely limited compared to the full DOM and BOM access you enjoy in a web browser. Such interaction as you can achieve in PDF is not readily translatable from how it works in a browser and would almost certainly need hand authoring.

Your example page has many effects that PDF, as an essentially static document layout format, simply cannot reproduce at all.

Edit:

I just want the finial rendering of the screen to be captured in the PDF

Ah, OK, that's a far easier and more common problem then.

In that case you'll have to use and automate a real web browser (like Firefox), or a toolkit that provides all the logic of a web browser (like WebKit), then either:

export to PDF, either using built-in tools like ‘Print to file’ in Firefox (with background images/colours turned on) or one of the PDF export add-ons, or
take a image snapsnot of the browser (and include the image in a PDF if you have to)

See these questions for some discussion of browser snapshotting.

bobince 2010-02-25 02:00:22

Not true. Flash can be added to pdf files now. However I am not aware of a javascript to actionscript/flash conversion path. :)

ghoppe 2010-02-25 02:12:53

Answer 4

A:

The fact that it uses any JavaScript at all means a lot of converters won't work. The JavaScript may be simple, but you still need an interpreter to handle it.

I haven't used it for myself, but you might try wkhtmltopdf. It uses the webkit rendering engine, and I believe it includes full javascript support. You would need to be able to install the software and run the executable, but otherwise it should be fairly straightforward.

BrianS 2010-02-25 04:47:47

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