cef-pdf

cef-pdf is a command line utility (with embedded HTTP server as an optional mode) for creating PDF documents from HTML content. It uses Google Chrome browser's Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) library for all it's internal work; loading urls, rendering HTML & CSS pages and PDF printing, therefore, it produces perfect, accurate, excellent quality PDF documents.

Usage:

cef-pdf [options] --url=<url>|--file=<path> [output]

Options:
  --help -h        This help screen.
  --url=<url>      URL to load, may be http, file, data, anything supported by Chromium.
  --file=<path>    File path to load using file:// scheme. May be relative to current directory.
  --size=<spec>    Size (format) of the paper: A3, B2.. or custom <width>x<height> in mm.
                   A4 is the default.
  --list-sizes     Show all defined page sizes.
  --landscape      Wheather to print with a landscape page orientation.
                   Default is portrait
  --margin=<spec>  Paper margins in mm (much like CSS margin but without units)
                   If omitted some default margin is applied.
  --javascript     Enable JavaScript.
  --backgrounds    Print with backgrounds.

Server options:
  --server         Start HTTP server
  --host=<host>    If starting server, specify ip address to bind to.
                   Default is 127.0.0.1
  --port=<port>    Specify server port number. Default is 9288

Output:
  PDF file name to create. Default is output.pdf

HTTP server usage

Execute cef-pdf with --server option and visit localhost:9288 with web browser. Default json response, with status and version number, should indicate the server is up and running on local machine:

{
    "status": "ok",
    "version": "0.2.0"
}

To receive a PDF, just make POST request to localhost:9288/foo.pdfwith some HTML content as the request body. foo may be any name you choose, .pdf suffix is always required. The response will contain the PDF data, with application/pdf as the content type.

In addition to POSTing content inside the request body, special HTTP header Content-Location is supported, which should be an URL to some external content. cef-pdfwill try to grab the content from this URL and use it just like it was the request's body. In this case, instead of POST, GET request is more appropriate (at the time of writing this, both methods are allowed).

Building

1. Get CEF binary from https://cefbuilds.com/ extract to $CEF_bin_folder
2. git clone this repo in $CEF_bin_folder / download source zip, extract into cep-pdf folder
3. Add line "add_subdirectory(cef-pdf)" to CmakeLists.txt in $CEF_bin_folder
4. Add director "build" in $CEF_bin_folder
5. cmake -G "Ninja" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release .. in this build folder
6. ninja OR ninja cef-pdf in build to compile only cef-pdf and not cefsimple and cefclient

Tested in Ubuntu 16.04 with cef 3.2785.1440.g1ee311f

TODO

• Mac OS X versions
• Improve performance

License

cef-pdf is licensed under the MIT license.