I'm trying to create a button that will start the automatic download of a PDF of the page as it looks with the sass styling. However, everything I try ends up with the styling messed up.

Here is the page (this is a testing site with several different content types)

But the PDF es out looking like this:

I'm pulling jspdf.debug.js and have the following HTML button+script in my page:

<div id="bypass"> <!-- keeps button from showing in PDF -->
    <button id="pdf-new" style="margin: 50px;"><a href="javascript:demoFromHTML()" class="button" style="color: black;">Generate PDF</a></button>
</div>

<script>
    function demoFromHTML() {
        var pdf = new jsPDF('p', 'pt', 'letter');
        // source can be HTML-formatted string, or a reference
        // to an actual DOM element from which the text will be scraped.
        source = $('#content')[0];

        // we support special element handlers. Register them with jQuery-style 
        // ID selector for either ID or node name. ("#iAmID", "div", "span" etc.)
        // There is no support for any other type of selectors 
        // (class, of pound) at this time.
        specialElementHandlers = {
            // element with id of "bypass" - jQuery style selector
            '#bypass': function (element, renderer) {
                // true = "handled elsewhere, bypass text extraction"
                return true
            }
        };
        margins = {
            top: 80,
            bottom: 60,
            left: 40,
            width: 522
        };
        // all coords and widths are in jsPDF instance's declared units
        // 'inches' in this case
        pdf.fromHTML(
        source, // HTML string or DOM elem ref.
        margins.left, // x coord
        margins.top, { // y coord
            'width': margins.width, // max width of content on PDF
            'elementHandlers': specialElementHandlers
        },

        function (dispose) {
            // dispose: object with X, Y of the last line add to the PDF 
            //          this allow the insertion of new lines after html
            pdf.save('Test.pdf');
        }, margins);
    }
</script>

How can I make the styling stay consistent from the html to the pdf?

I'm trying to create a button that will start the automatic download of a PDF of the page as it looks with the sass styling. However, everything I try ends up with the styling messed up.

Here is the page (this is a testing site with several different content types)

But the PDF es out looking like this:

I'm pulling jspdf.debug.js and have the following HTML button+script in my page:

<div id="bypass"> <!-- keeps button from showing in PDF -->
    <button id="pdf-new" style="margin: 50px;"><a href="javascript:demoFromHTML()" class="button" style="color: black;">Generate PDF</a></button>
</div>

<script>
    function demoFromHTML() {
        var pdf = new jsPDF('p', 'pt', 'letter');
        // source can be HTML-formatted string, or a reference
        // to an actual DOM element from which the text will be scraped.
        source = $('#content')[0];

        // we support special element handlers. Register them with jQuery-style 
        // ID selector for either ID or node name. ("#iAmID", "div", "span" etc.)
        // There is no support for any other type of selectors 
        // (class, of pound) at this time.
        specialElementHandlers = {
            // element with id of "bypass" - jQuery style selector
            '#bypass': function (element, renderer) {
                // true = "handled elsewhere, bypass text extraction"
                return true
            }
        };
        margins = {
            top: 80,
            bottom: 60,
            left: 40,
            width: 522
        };
        // all coords and widths are in jsPDF instance's declared units
        // 'inches' in this case
        pdf.fromHTML(
        source, // HTML string or DOM elem ref.
        margins.left, // x coord
        margins.top, { // y coord
            'width': margins.width, // max width of content on PDF
            'elementHandlers': specialElementHandlers
        },

        function (dispose) {
            // dispose: object with X, Y of the last line add to the PDF 
            //          this allow the insertion of new lines after html
            pdf.save('Test.pdf');
        }, margins);
    }
</script>

How can I make the styling stay consistent from the html to the pdf?

• javascript
• html
• css
• pdf
• jspdf

• There's a java library called pd4ml that was designed with this exact functionality in mind. pd4ml. – QuestionMarks Commented Dec 1, 2015 at 21:16
• Is the CSS applied directly to the elements inline? Might work better if it is. – Matthew Strawbridge Commented Dec 1, 2015 at 21:29
• @QuestionMarks I can try that if this doesn't work but jsPDF was designed for this too, so I'm hoping to fix my issue. Every solution I've tried has had this styling problem. @ Matthew I tried doing inline styling, and that didn't work either. – Virge Assault Commented Dec 1, 2015 at 21:46

1 Answer 1

I ended up getting this to work by using html2canvas along with jsPDF.

My button that hides itself from pdf with an html2canvas option:

<div data-html2canvas-ignore="true">
    <button id="pdf-new"><a href="javascript:demoFromHTML()" class="button" style="color: black;">Generate PDF</a></button>
</div>

And the script for the bottom of the html page

<script>
    function demoFromHTML() {
        var pdf = new jsPDF('p', 'pt', 'letter');
        var options = {
            background: '#fff' //background is transparent if you don't set it, which turns it black for some reason.
        };
        pdf.addHTML($('#content')[0], options, function () {
                pdf.save('Test.pdf');
        });
    }
</script>

Also in html2canvas.js I changed:

_html2canvas.Util.isTransparent = function(backgroundColor) {
  return (backgroundColor === "transparent" || backgroundColor === "rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)");
};

to this, in order to avoid that transparent-to-black background

_html2canvas.Util.isTransparent = function(backgroundColor) {
  return (backgroundColor === "transparent" || backgroundColor === "rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" || backgroundColor === undefined);
};

Hope that helps someone!