Web page to PDF converter

Question

I am looking for a JavaScript or PHP plugin/library to convert a beautifully designed website (using CSS) to PDF file.

To clarify further, I need to convert the HTML-CSS output on the webpage to PDF file. I found some interesting plugins related to JavaScript like jsPDF but it only converts HTML to PDF, ignoring CSS. Which is not what I want.

Some points:

• The generated PDF file should have output of both HTML and CSS.
• Should work on both Mac and Windows.
• Should work on latest version of Chrome and Firefox.

PS: The elements are being added dynamically using JavaScript. Suppose a scenario where there are lot of different styled sections. User can add or remove those styled sections, and later he/she can press on a button "create as PDF".

Answer 1

WeasyPrint

Free (under a BSD license) and open-source solution helping web developers to create PDF documents. It turns simple HTML pages (with CSS, SVG and so on) into PDF format. It aims to support web standards for printing.

html-pdf (npm)

You can use NodeJS html-pdf npm package (see GitHub, install via: npm install -g html-pdf). Sample shell command-line:

html-pdf http://example.com/ example.pdf

---

PhantomJS

Use PhantomJS with rasterize.js, Sample command-line:

phantomjs rasterize.js http://example.com/

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wkhtmltopdf

Use wkhtmltopdf (see: GitHub page) command-line tool to convert the website into the PDF page.

Answer 2

PhantomJS, which is an excellent headless browser, great for development porpoises, says

Since PhantomJS is using WebKit, a real layout and rendering engine, it can capture a web page as a screenshot.

and

Beside PNG format, PhantomJS supports JPEG, GIF, and PDF.

It is really simple to use. Here's some sampel code for captureing as .PNG

var page = require('webpage').create();
page.open('http://github.com/', function() {
  page.render('github.png');
  phantom.exit();
});

Answer 3

This question asks Is it possible to capture or print what's displayed in an html canvas as an image or pdf? and the answer by @lepe, who seems to know what he is talking abbout, with 13.6k rep, which has 16 upvotes, says

I would use "wkhtmltopdf". It just work great. It uses webkit engine (used in Chrome, Safari, etc.), and it is very easy to use:

wkhtmltopdf stackoverflow.com/questions/923885/ this_question.pdf

That's it!

Try it

The recommendation is endorsed by Mr JavaScript, who sounds like he knows what he is talking about.