Generating PDF files with JavaScript

I’m trying to convert XML data into PDF files from a web page and I was hoping I could do this entirely within JavaScript. I need to be able to draw text, images and simple shapes. I would love to be able to do this entirely in the browser.


I've just written a library called jsPDF which generates PDFs using Javascript alone. It's still very young, and I'll be adding features and bug fixes soon. Also got a few ideas for workarounds in browsers that do not support Data URIs. It's licensed under a liberal MIT license.

I came across this question before I started writing it and thought I'd come back and let you know :)

Generate PDFs in Javascript

Example create a "Hello World" PDF file.

// Default export is a4 paper, portrait, using milimeters for units
var doc = new jsPDF()

doc.text('Hello world!', 10, 10)
doc.save('a4.pdf')
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jspdf/1.3.5/jspdf.debug.js"></script>

Another javascript library worth mentioning is pdfmake.

  • pdfmake playground
  • pdfmake on github

The browser support does not appear to be as strong as jsPDF, nor does there seem to be an option for shapes, but the options for formatting text are more advanced then the options currently available in jsPDF.