/pdf API
The pdf API allows for simple navigation to a site and capturing a pdf. browserless will respond with a Content-Type
of application/pdf
, and a Buffer of the pdf file. Similar to screenshots, this also exposes puppeteer's pdf
options via an options
property in the JSON body for granular control.
If you want to see all the options check out the schema for it here on GitHub.
This route requires either a
url
orhtml
property in the JSON body. Whenhtml
is present browserless will render the HTML for you and capture the PDF
Take a PDF of example.com
// JSON body
// `options` are the options available via puppeteer's .screenshot method
{
"url": "https://example.com/",
"options": {
"displayHeaderFooter": true,
"printBackground": false,
"format": "A0"
}
}
cURL (with an API token)
curl -X POST \
https://chrome.browserless.io/pdf?token=MY_API_TOKEN \
-H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{
"url": "https://example.com/",
"options": {
"displayHeaderFooter": true,
"printBackground": false,
"format": "A0"
}
}'
Custom options
The /pdf
route has a few special custom options that make it more usable and configurable. We've added these options based on feedback from you in hope that it will help gather best-practices in a single place.
gotoOptions
The gotoOptions
is an object that's passed directly into puppeteer's page.goto
call so that you can specify things like alternative loaded events. See puppeteer's goto options for more information.
Example (with an API token)
curl -X POST \
https://chrome.browserless.io/pdf?token=MY_API_TOKEN \
-H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{
"url": "https://example.com/",
"gotoOptions": {
"waitUntil": "networkidle2",
},
"options": {
"displayHeaderFooter": true,
"printBackground": false,
"format": "A0"
}
}'
safeMode
Because longer pages can crash trigger a "Page Crashed!" error when doing a page.pdf
invocation, we've implemented a "safe" way to generate PDF's of bigger websites. When set to true
, safeMode
will:
- Capture PDF's one page at a time in-memory.
- Once all pages are in memory we connect them together.
- Compress the PDF so it's more efficiently transported over the network.
- Return the resulting PDF as a binary via
application/pdf
.
Please note that when using
safeMode
that it will likely take a while longer to process the request, and the resulting PDF file may be larger.
Example (with an API token)
curl -X POST \
https://chrome.browserless.io/pdf?token=MY_API_TOKEN \
-H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{
"url": "https://example.com/",
"safeMode": true,
"options": {
"displayHeaderFooter": true,
"printBackground": false,
"format": "A0"
}
}'