Pdf-lib: Express.js Working Example

[dhollenbeck]

Thank you very much for this amazing lib! Great job!

I would like to use pdf-lib in my express.js app. Below is a working example of an express.js app sending a Hello World pdf which Chrome reads just fine.

Am I doing things correctly?

'use strict';

var PdfLib = require('pdf-lib');
var PDFDocument = PdfLib.PDFDocument;
var StandardFonts = PdfLib.StandardFonts;
var rgb = PdfLib.rgb;

var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var port = 3000;

async function createPdf() {
    var pdfDoc = await PDFDocument.create();
    var timesRomanFont = await pdfDoc.embedFont(StandardFonts.TimesRoman);
    var page = pdfDoc.addPage();
    var { width, height } = page.getSize();
    var fontSize = 30;
    page.drawText('Hello World', {
        x: 50,
        y: height - 4 * fontSize,
        size: fontSize,
        font: timesRomanFont,
        color: rgb(0, 0.53, 0.71),
    });
    var pdfBytes = await pdfDoc.save();
        var pdfBuffer = Buffer.from(pdfBytes.buffer, 'binary');
    return pdfBuffer;
}

app.get('/', function(req, res) {
    createPdf().then(function(pdfBuffer) {
        res.status(200);
        res.type('pdf');
        res.send(buffer);
    }).catch(function (err) {
        res.status(500);
        res.send(err.message);
    });
});

app.listen(port, function() {
    console.log(`Example app listening on port ${port}!`);
});

[Hopding]

Hello @dhollenbeck!

Your implementation looks good to me. Are you running into any problems with this? Or did you just want a sanity check of your code?

[dhollenbeck]

The example code above works correctly with no problems. I just posted it in case it helps others. @Hopding your work is awesome. Thank you so much.

[scottie-schneider]

Thank you for leaving this. Allowed me to finally get express up and running after 3 days of frustration.
One slight modification to the code:
createPdf().then(function(pdfBuffer) { res.status(200); res.type('pdf'); res.send(pdfBuffer); })

[kimmobrunfeldt]

Thanks for this example! It seems that by default express doesn't handle Uint8Array nicely and returns the data in a weird format. Solution seems to be to return a Buffer: https://github.com/expressjs/express/issues/2910