Archive for 2019


Docker Container for Headless Chrome and Puppeteer

August 3rd, 2019 / by api2pdf /

Intro API2PDF is proud to announce it has built a Docker Container to provide a convenient and reliable Web API to convert web pages and HTML to PDF format and screenshots. The underlying rendering engine is Headless Chrome w/ Puppeteer functionality. Testing can be done to ensure the container meets your needs by following the […]

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Celebrating one year and tentative roadmap for the future of the API2PDF product

June 24th, 2019 / by api2pdf /

The Past Year Hello everyone, Zack here! One year ago we hit the metaphorical GO button. It was anti-climactic of course because we had no launch strategy and Google had yet to even index our website. It was about 10 days later where I remember waking up one morning and found that a developer from […]

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Post Mortem – Ensuring High Availability on Azure Functions

June 13th, 2019 / by api2pdf /

Intro On May 15th, 2019 at 5:01 PM UTC, API2PDF services stopped generating PDF files, returning high error rates. This is what is depicted in the image above. 3 minutes later, at 5:04 PM, services resumed. While only down for 3 minutes and 99% of our customers did not even notice, at least one customer […]

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Convert HTML to PDF with javascript and AngularJS

June 13th, 2019 / by api2pdf /

Intro In some cases you may need to convert HTML to PDF from your client side application. Rendering a high quality PDF is not obvious and doing it purely from javascript isn’t feasible either. You need to be able to use a browser-based PDF engine like wkhtmltopdf or Headless Chrome. If you’re looking to generate […]

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Convert HTML to PDF with javascript and VueJs

June 12th, 2019 / by api2pdf /

Intro VueJs is a popular client side javascript framework. It has risen in prominence as an alternative to juggernauts like ReactJs and Angular. Part of its allure comes from its simplicity and lower barrier to entry. While building a VueJs application, you may find yourself in need of generating PDFs. This can push you down […]

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Tackling API2PDF’s technical and business challenges with Azure Table Storage and Data Lake Analytics

May 11th, 2019 / by api2pdf /

Intro Every now and then I like to post about API2PDF’s infrastructure and business side. It can be slightly more interesting than talking about PDF files. In today’s post we will combine the two by discussing our long term logging components and how we use that to track growth metrics and accounting for finance purposes. […]

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[Solved] Bootstrap striped table not printing to PDF

April 13th, 2019 / by api2pdf /

We received a support request from a developer who was using Bootstrap’s CSS and his HTML table was set to “striped” via: <table class=”table table-striped”> …</table> Now the HTML was correct, and when loading it up in a browser, the striped rows, which alternate a background color to make it easier for reading was appearing […]

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[Solved] Troubleshooting rendering issues with HTML to PDF

April 10th, 2019 / by api2pdf /

In this article we will walk you through the best way to figure out why your HTML is not properly rendering as PDF using our API service. Step 1 Open up your favorite text editor like notepad++ or VS Code and save your raw HTML that you’ve been sending to API2PDF and save it as […]

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[Resolved] Bad kerning with wkhtmltopdf rendering of html

April 4th, 2019 / by api2pdf /

Today we received an inquiry about wkhtmltopdf’s poor rendering of HTML to PDF with Google’s Roboto font. Roboto is one of the most popular fonts and so it’s important for this to be resolved. The issue with this rendering problem is known as “kerning” which means that the spacing between the fonts is incorrect. Our […]

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Multi-lingual support for HTML to PDF (wkhtmltopdf / Headless Chrome)

March 25th, 2019 / by api2pdf /

Intro – HTML to PDF with Multiple Languages A frequent question we receive at API2PDF is if it is possible to generate PDFs with foreign languages, or languages that contain special characters in their text. The answer is yes, and it is possible to support these languages in both wkhtmltopdf and Headless Chrome rendering engines. […]

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