FigExport

FigExport is a package for automatic export of figures of heterogeneous formats to PDF, SVG, PNG or JPG files. It uses a JSON export configuration and includes a user-friendly command line interface (CLI).

List of Contents:

• Input File Formats
• Installation
• Usage
  • Configuration File Example
  • Command Line Arguments
• Developer Section
  • Install from Source
• License

Input File Formats

FigExport supports the following input file formats:

• .svg: Vector graphic figures
• .drawio: Draw.io diagrams, created using the Draw.io tool
• .tex: LaTeX documents, e.g., containing a TikZ figure (recommended: \documentclass{standalone})
• .puml: PlantUML diagrams

Note: Other file formats in the input folder(s) will be ignored during the export process.

Installation

pip install figexport

Usage

In FigExport, the main export object (class ExportManager) is configured with an ExportConfig object, which can be initialized by parsing a JSON configuration file. If not provided, the setting parameters in ExportConfig will be set to their default values.

In the CLI tool, the JSON configuration file can be directly passed to the ExportManager class using the -c/--config option.

Configuration File Parameters

Note: The path parameters in the configuration file are interpreted as relative to the given the root_dir, except directory_mappings/target, which is interpreted as relative to the export directory.
In the CLI tool, the root_dir is set to the folder where the configuration file is located, or, if not provided, to the current working directory.

Parameter	Description	Default value (if not specified)
export_dir	Path to the directory to save the exported figures to.	_export
export_format	The file format to export the figures in.	pdf

Configuration File Example

figexport_config.json:

{
    "export_dir": "export",
    "export_format": "pdf",
    "directory_mappings": [
        {
            "source": "figures_A",
            "target": "."
        },
        {
            "source": "figures_B",
            "target": "figures_B"
        }

    ],
    "excluded_paths": [
        "figures_A/subfolder_A1"
    ],
    "tools": {
        "drawio": {
            "exe_path": "C:/Program Files/Draw.io/draw.io.exe",
        },
        "plantuml": {
            "download_url": "https://github.com/plantuml/plantuml/releases/download/v1.2025.2/plantuml-1.2025.2.jar",
            "jar_name": "plantuml.jar"
        }
    }
}

Command Line Arguments

• CLI usage:

figexport [-h] [-c CONFIG] [-f FORMAT] [path]

• Positional arguments:

Option	Description
path	Path to a file or folder to export. If not provided, the path(s) from the configuration file will be used.

• Options:

Option	Description
-h, --help	Show the help message and exit
-c/--config CONFIG	Path to the configuration JSON file. Default: "figexport_config.json"
-f/--format FORMAT	Format of the exported figures: pdf, svg, png, jpg. Default: value in config file, or "pdf" if not specified.

Developer Section

Install from Source

Note: To avoid potential dependency conflicts on your system, it is recommended to use a Python virtual environment.

• Clone this repository and create a Python virtual environment:

git clone https://github.com/HouGui/figexport.git && cd figexport
python -m venv env

• Activate the virtual environment, then install the package and its dependencies using pip:

pip install -e .[dev]

-e installs the package in editable mode, and [dev] includes the dev dependencies in the installation.

License

You are free to use, modify, and distribute this software under the terms of the MIT License.