https://github.com/mcecode/pdf-made-easy
A CLI application for building and developing PDF documents.
https://github.com/mcecode/pdf-made-easy
cli document html liquid pdf puppeteer template yaml
Last synced: 16 days ago
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A CLI application for building and developing PDF documents.
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/mcecode/pdf-made-easy
- Owner: mcecode
- License: apache-2.0
- Created: 2023-01-26T06:39:45.000Z (about 3 years ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2026-01-02T20:07:31.000Z (about 2 months ago)
- Last Synced: 2026-01-09T09:28:49.682Z (about 1 month ago)
- Topics: cli, document, html, liquid, pdf, puppeteer, template, yaml
- Language: JavaScript
- Homepage: https://www.npmjs.com/package/pdf-made-easy
- Size: 1.57 MB
- Stars: 0
- Watchers: 1
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 0
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- Changelog: CHANGELOG.md
- License: LICENSE
Awesome Lists containing this project
README
# PDF Made Easy
PDF Made Easy (PME) is a CLI application for building and developing PDF
documents.
## What this is
- A CLI you use to design and generate PDFs on your local machine using
[Liquid](https://shopify.github.io/liquid) templates and
[YAML](https://learnxinyminutes.com/yaml) data files. Under the hood, it uses
[Puppeteer](https://pptr.dev) to create the PDFs.
- Something I created because I wanted to generate PDFs using the familiar HTML
and CSS that I know.
## What this is NOT
- A library you use to incorporate into your scripts.
- Something you use on your server to generate PDFs on the fly. It's not very
efficient to use a whole browser instance just to do that, using something
like [PDFKit](https://pdfkit.org),
[@pdfme/pdf-lib](https://github.com/pdfme/pdfme/tree/main/packages/pdf-lib),
or [MuhammaraJS](https://github.com/julianhille/MuhammaraJS) would probably be
better.
## Requirements
- [Node.js](https://nodejs.org), preferably
[the latest Maintenance release or later](https://nodejs.org/about/previous-releases).
## Installation
### Global
```console
npm install --global pdf-made-easy
```
### Local
```console
npm install pdf-made-easy
```
## Usage
```console
pme
pme [options]
pme [options]
Commands:
pme Same as 'dev' command [default]
pme dev Watch data and template files and output PDF on change
pme build Output PDF using data and template files
Options:
-h, --help Show help [boolean]
-v, --version Show version number [boolean]
-c, --config Path to JavaScript config file [string]
-d, --data Path to YAML data file [string] [default: "data.yml"]
-o, --output Path to PDF output file [string] [default: "output.pdf"]
-t, --template Path to Liquid template file
[string] [default: "template.liquid"]
Examples:
pme
pme -d info.yml
pme dev -t ./templates/default.liquid
pme build -o /home/user/document.pdf
pme -d info.yml -t ./templates/default.liquid -o /home/user/document.pdf
```
### Passing options to Puppeteer and LiquidJS
You may want to specify options to change the default behavior of the libraries
that this CLI uses. For that, you can create a JavaScript config file that
exports a config object at the current working directory where you will invoke
`pme` or point to one using the `--config` or `-c` flag. By default, `pme` will
try to find `pme.config.js`, `pme.config.mjs`, and `pme.config.cjs` in the
current working directory, in that order.
Let's say you don't want the Chrome instance Puppeteer will use to be sandboxed,
you want to be notified when you don't set variables in your YAML config file
that your Liquid template expects, and you want your PDF to be in landscape. You
can create a `pme.config.mjs` with the following contents:
```js
import { defineConfig } from "pdf-made-easy";
export default defineConfig({
launchOptions: { args: ["--no-sandbox"] },
liquidOptions: { strictVariables: true },
pdfOptions: { landscape: true },
});
```
`defineConfig` is a helper to give you autocompletion and to check that you've
provided the correct config keys. All of these settings are optional, you can
provide some, a few, or none of them. Below are links to further documentation
for what other options you can set:
- [`launchOptions`](https://pptr.dev/api/puppeteer.launchoptions)
- [`liquidOptions`](https://liquidjs.com/api/interfaces/LiquidOptions.html)
- [`pdfOptions`](https://pptr.dev/api/puppeteer.pdfoptions)
**Note:** For `launchOptions`, `handleSIGHUP`, `handleSIGINT`, and
`handleSIGTERM` are always set to `false` since `pme` handles those signals
itself. As for `pdfOptions`, `path` is always set to what is passed to the
`--output` or `-o` flag.
## License
Copyright 2023-present Matthew Espino
This project is licensed under the [Apache 2.0 license](LICENSE).