Comments on: Dynamically Generated PDFs… with JavaScript?

By: m0sh3g

m0sh3g — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 07:28:29 +0000

fjakobs: IE8 gives this error:

Line: 72
Error: The data area passed to a system call is too small.

on this line:
document.location.href = url;

So, it doesn’t work…

By: fjakobs

fjakobs — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:08:57 +0000

Data URIs are supported in IE8 . I haven’t tried the PDF demo but in theory it should work.

By: aw2xcd

aw2xcd — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:49:26 +0000

Maybe we can reuse some of the code so javascript can display the pdf using canvas?

By: jimbojw

jimbojw — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:02:38 +0000

I toyed with this idea about a year ago. Using a data URI with application/pdf as the mimetype and base64 encoded data, it’s possible to throw up generated PDF data in say an iframe.

I stopped working on it before I even really got started because IE doesn’t support data URIs – at least it didn’t up to 7 and I think 8 doesn’t either. Times have changed though, and it’s definitely becoming more popular to leverage modern browser capabilities and just ignore IE altogether. This is Bespin’s standpoint, and I believe MediaWiki has plans to support the html5 video tag (if they don’t already).

Good to see someone took the idea to the next step. I’ve felt that browser-generated PDFs are a long time coming.

By: Spocke

Spocke — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:49:22 +0000

Since it doesn’t work on IE 6/7/8 I see very little usage for this kind of thing in any production environment. IE is holding cool things like this back. :(

By: Schill

Schill — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:43:58 +0000

The interesting (/scary) thing with data: URIs and Javascript is, you can cook up just about anything (P01 and myself have experimented with data: in the favicon area, for example.) PDFs are a more-practical one, I’d say. ;)

By: MrRio

MrRio — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:17:53 +0000

Yeah, PrinceXML is great. :)

By: fzammetti

fzammetti — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:00:45 +0000

Kudos indeed… I’ve unfortunately had to deal a lot with PDF generation over the years, I’ve seen and done quite a bit in that realm, but this is definitely a very cool first. You’ve made my “projects to watch” bookmarks list for sure :)

By: BertrandLeRoy

BertrandLeRoy — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:49:28 +0000

That is pretty smart & awesome!

By: JonathanLeech

JonathanLeech — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:46:20 +0000

Haven’t tried Prince XML, but on the open-source side of things to do XHTML -> PDF, the Flying Saucer XHTML rendererer does a great job. It uses iText. I had theorized that using javascript to generate PDFs was possible, using data:URIs, so its cool to see someone actually do it. If I were tackling it I would try to port / compile the necessary parts of iText and Flying Saucer to javascript using GWT.

By: bander

bander — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:04:31 +0000

Another recommendation for Prince XML. It's pricey, but it's a joy to use.

By: smith

smith — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:59:43 +0000

Very nice. If it can ever work as well as aspEasyPDF it’ll make a great replacement. I’m sure this can catch up pretty easily.

If you’re generating PDF out of html/xml, though, nothing can touch the functionality or performance of Prince XML.

By: igstan

igstan — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:38:03 +0000

Brilliant!

By: AndiSkater

AndiSkater — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:27:46 +0000

Great work!

jsPDF will also be of great use for Appcelerator Titanium applications.

Probably you can benefit from AlivePDF (http://alivepdf.bytearray.org/) which is a PDF creation engine for ActionScript3.

By: MrRio

MrRio — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:12:57 +0000

Examples for Jaxer and other Server-side Javascript platforms will follow when I’ve finished the font and image support.

By: MrRio

MrRio — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:12:13 +0000

Also works on Mobile Safari (iPhone) and Firefox 3 :)

By: Ben Galbraith

Ben Galbraith — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:00:33 +0000

@p01: Hey, thx. Updated the post.

By: p01

p01 — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:49:15 +0000

Smooth as a baby bottom in Opera 9.6 & 10 too.
Firefox 3.1b3 fire up the PDF in an external reader though.