Generating PDFs in React with react-pdf

Editor’s note: This article was updated by David Omotayo on 11 March 2024 to outline some example use cases for generating PDFs in React, discuss the pros and cons of implementing this feature from scratch, update the react-pdf library’s stats, and compare react-pdf to other libraries.

There are several reasons why you might want to incorporate a PDF document generator feature in your application. Fortunately, the React ecosystem provides a wealth of tools offering simple ways to generate PDF documents directly within React applications.

One such tool is the react-pdf library, which simplifies the PDF generation process within your React project. In this article, we’ll explore why you might want to implement a PDF document generation feature, the fundamentals of react-pdf, and advanced concepts. We’ll also compare react-pdf to other libraries.

Why generate PDFs in a React application?

There are many use cases for a PDF generator feature in a React application, such as offline access to the application’s content, report generation, and more. However, the most common use case for such a feature in modern apps is data exports — for example, invoices or brochures.

To put it into perspective, consider a thriving online business. Every sale means generating an invoice, a process that can quickly become tedious. In order to create a receipt for each customer, you would need to follow steps such as:

• Open your word processor and paste the user’s personal information
• Write the user’s purchases in a table and calculate the total
• Download this file and convert it to PDF format
• Email this document to the user

Sure, that might work. But consider this: what if the business get hundreds of customers in a single day? This situation could result in a substantial waste of time and energy, as the same process would need to be repeated for each customer. So, how do we mitigate this problem?

The best way to solve this issue is to automate this operation by using an API. This is where react-pdf and other similar libraries comes in.

Building a PDF generator from scratch vs. using a library

While building a PDF generator from the ground up is technically possible, it’s crucial to weigh the pros and cons before diving in. Let’s explore both approaches to see which aligns better with your project goals.

Pros of building from scratch include:

• Valuable learning experience: The process itself can be an excellent learning opportunity, deepening your understanding of PDF generation and potentially other related technologies
• Customization: You have complete control over every aspect of the generator, allowing you to tailor features, functionalities, and design to your exact needs. This can be valuable for highly specialized use cases

However, crafting a PDF document generator from the ground up can be tedious and time-consuming. You would need to consider implementing the following features:

• Support for various content types: Enable the inclusion of various content types such as text, images, tables, and charts within the PDF documents
• Integration with existing libraries or frameworks: Offer compatibility and integration with other React libraries or frameworks, allowing you to leverage additional functionalities if needed
• Customization options: Flexibility to customize the appearance and layout of the PDF documents according to specific requirements, including headers, footers, page numbering, and margins
• Cross-browser compatibility: Ensure compatibility with major web browsers and guaranteeing consistent rendering of PDF documents across different platforms and devices
• Performance optimization: Optimize performance to efficiently generate PDF documents, especially when dealing with large datasets or complex content structures
• Maintenance burden: Beyond the initial development effort, maintaining a custom PDF generator requires ongoing upkeep. Bug fixes, compatibility updates, and potential security vulnerabilities all become your responsibility.

As you can tell, this can be quite tedious. Additionally, beyond the initial development effort, maintaining a custom PDF generator requires ongoing upkeep. Bug fixes, compatibility updates, and potential security vulnerabilities all become your responsibility.

Although the customization and learning experience can be valuable, the time investment and ongoing maintenance burden can be significant. Using a library like react-pdf relieves you of the burden of implementing all these features, allowing you to focus on the core logic of your application.

Installing react-pdf

To install the react-pdf package, run the following terminal command:

npm i @react-pdf/renderer

Simple usage of react-pdf

The following block of code renders a basic PDF document in the browser:

import {
  Document,
  Page,
  Text,
  View,
  StyleSheet,
  PDFViewer,
} from "@react-pdf/renderer";
// Create styles
const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  page: {
    backgroundColor: "#d11fb6",
    color: "white",
  },
  section: {
    margin: 10,
    padding: 10,
  },
  viewer: {
    width: window.innerWidth, //the pdf viewer will take up all of the width and height
    height: window.innerHeight,
  },
});

// Create Document Component
function BasicDocument() {
  return (
    <PDFViewer style={styles.viewer}>
      {/* Start of the document*/}
      <Document>
        {/*render a single page*/}
        <Page size="A4" style={styles.page}>
          <View style={styles.section}>
            <Text>Hello</Text>
          </View>
          <View style={styles.section}>
            <Text>World</Text>
          </View>
        </Page>
      </Document>
    </PDFViewer>
  );
}
export default BasicDocument;

In this code:

• The StyleSheet module allows developers to apply CSS code on their PDF documents. Here, we are telling React to change the background color and the font color of our pages
• Furthermore, in the viewer object, we are using the width and height properties. As a result, this will tell react-pdf that we want the browser’s PDF viewer to take up all of the space on the page
• As the name suggests, the PDFViewer component will render a PDF viewer on the browser

Let’s test it out! As the next step, render the BasicDocument component to the DOM like so:

import BasicDocument from "./BasicDocument";
function App() {
  return (
    <div className="App">
      <BasicDocument />
    </div>
  );
}
export default App;

You should see the following:

We can even reduce the viewer’s available space:

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  viewer: {
    width: window.innerWidth / 3,
    height: window.innerHeight / 2,
  },
  //further code...
});

In this snippet, we restricted the viewport’s width and height properties. This will decrease their available sizes on the page:

Fundamental components of the react-pdf package

The react-pdf library offers various components we can display in our generated PDF. Let’s discuss and demonstrate these components now.

Embedding links

We can display anchor links using the Link component. This is handy for cases where you want to redirect the user to a website:

import { Link } from "@react-pdf/renderer";
<Text>
  <Link src="www.facebook.com">Go to Facebook</Link>
</Text>

Here, we are assigning the src prop to Facebook’s website. When the user clicks on this piece of text, the app will redirect them to the page:

Displaying annotations

To attach annotations in your document, use the Note component. One critical use case for this element is when you need to display comments in a file:

import { Note } from "@react-pdf/renderer";
<Note>This will take the user to Facebook</Note>

Hovering over this annotation will display the text we set:

Displaying graphics in a Canvas

The Canvas component lets users draw content on the page. This is suitable for displaying simple diagrams and logos in SVG format.

This code snippet renders a triangle on the page:

import { Canvas } from "@react-pdf/renderer";
// Create styles
const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  canvas: {
    backgroundColor: "black",
    height: 500,
    width: 500,
  },
});
<Canvas
  style={styles.canvas}
  paint={
    (painterObject) =>
      painterObject
        .save()
        .moveTo(100, 100) //move to position 100,100
        .lineTo(300, 100) //draw a line till 300, 100
        .lineTo(300, 300) //draw another line till 300,300
        .fill("red") //when the diagram is drawn, set the background color to pink
  }
/>

In the above snippet, we used the Canvas component to display a diagram. The paint prop is a callback function. One of its parameters is a painterObject argument, which gives us access to drawing methods:

Displaying SVG images

react-pdf also bundles an SVG component to render SVG diagrams. Just like Canvas, we can use this for rendering simple diagrams.

This piece of code renders a line on the page:

import { Line, Svg } from "@react-pdf/renderer";
// Create styles
const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  line: {
    x1: "0", //starting coords are x1 and y1
    y1: "0",
    x2: "200", //ending coords:
    y2: "200",
    strokeWidth: 2,
    stroke: "rgb(255,255,255)", //stroke color
  },
});
<Svg width={"50%"} height={"50%"} style={{ backgroundColor: "blue" }}>
  <Line style={styles.line} />
</Svg>

Here, we used Line to render a line in the document. Notice that Line is a child of the Svg component.

We can also use the Polygon component to render closed shapes like so:

import { Svg, Polygon } from "@react-pdf/renderer";

<Svg width={"50%"} height={"50%"} style={{ backgroundColor: "blue" }}>
  <Polygon
    points="100,100 200,100 200,250 100,250"
    fill="white" //color of background
    stroke="black" //color of border
    strokeWidth={10} //border thickness
  />
</Svg>

The points prop accepts a dataset of coordinates. This will help the app render the graphic:

Rendering JPG or PNG photos

The Image component gives us the ability to insert images over the network or on a local disk. This is great for displaying complex diagrams or screenshots.

This block of code renders a 500 by 500 pixel image on the PDF:

import { Image } from "@react-pdf/renderer";
const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  image: {
    width: 500,
    height: 500,
  },
});
<Image
  style={styles.image}
  src="https://images.pexels.com/photos/20066389/pexels-photo-20066389/free-photo-of-a-bubble-is-floating-in-the-sky-over-trees.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&w=1260&h=750&dpr=2"
/> 

The src prop contains the source URL of the image that we want to render:

Advanced react-pdf concepts

Now that we’ve gone through the fundamentals, let’s discuss some advanced concepts related to using react-pdf to generate PDFs in a React project.

Using flexboxes

Just like CSS, react-pdf lets developers use the flex property, which allows for responsive design. This is handy for cases where you want your documents to scale up or down depending on the device’s screen size:

// Create styles. Notice that we have specified a flex direction.
const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  page: {
    flexDirection: "column",
  },
});
<Page size="A4" style={styles.page}>
  <View style={{ backgroundColor: "black", flex: 1 }}></View>
  <View style={(styles.section, { backgroundColor: "pink", flex: 1 })}></View>
</Page>

In this piece of code, we used the flex property on both of our View components. This means that half the page will have a background color of black and the other half will have a pink colored background:

Page breaks

Page breaks are useful for ensuring that a certain element will always show up on the top of the page. We can enable page breaks via the break prop like so:

// Create styles
const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  text: {
    fontSize: 40,
  },
});
// Create Document Component
<Page>
  <Text break style={styles.text}>
    First PDF break
  </Text>
  <Text break style={styles.text}>
    Second break
  </Text>
</Page>

The result will appear as shown below:

Dynamic page content

With react-pdf, we can render dynamic text using the render prop of the Text component like so:

<Document>
  <Page size="A4">
    <Text
      style={styles.text}
      render={({ pageNumber, totalPages }) =>
        `Page ${pageNumber} of ${totalPages}`
      }
      fixed
    />
  </Page>
  <Page>
    <Text> Hello, second page!</Text>
  </Page>
</Document>

Here, the render prop has two arguments:

• pageNumber: the current index of the page
• totalPages: the total number of pages that this document contains

We are displaying both of their values to the client:

Note that the render function is executed twice for <Text /> elements: once for layout on the page wrapping process, and again after it knows how many pages the document will have. Therefore, use it in cases where app performance is not a problem.

We can also use the render prop on our View element:

<View render={({ pageNumber }) => (
    //detect if user is NOT on an even page:
        pageNumber % 2 === 0 && (
          <View style={{ background: 'red' }}>
            {/*If condition is fulfilled, display this component*/}
            <Text>I'm only visible in odd pages!</Text>
          </View>
        )
      )} />

Other React PDF libraries to consider

The react-pdf library is just one of the various tools available in the React ecosystem that you can use to generate, render, annotate, or style PDF documents in a React application. Let’s explore other tools that you can use either in place of or alongside the react-pdf library and discuss their unique features and the ideal use cases.

wojtekmaj/react-pdf

At the top of the list is the wojtekmaj/react-pdf package, an easy-to-use PDF reader that enables you to display PDF documents in your React application. The package is designed solely for displaying or rendering PDF documents, making it suitable for use alongside a PDF generator such as the react-pdf package.

wojtekmaj/react-pdf has excellent community support and undergoes constant updates. Additionally, it boasts over 8K+ stars on Github and 900K+ weekly downloads on npm. With such popularity, you can be assured that it is suitable for use in your applications.

Features of the wojtekmaj/react-pdf library:

• Multiple rendering methods
• Text selection
• Annotations

Quickstart command:

npm i react-pdf

react-pdf-highlighter

react-pdf-highlighter is a lightweight PDF annotation library built on the PDF.js package by Mozilla. You can use this package alongside other libraries that generate or render PDF documents (such as react-pdf) by integrating annotation features such as highlighting text in PDF documents after generating them.

The react-pdf-highlighter package undergoes regular updates and has 900+ stars on GitHub and 5K+ weekly downloads on npm.

Features of react-pdf-highlighter:

• Annotation
• Text and rectangular highlights
• Independent highlight data format
• Custom events and interactions

Quickstart command:

npm i react-pdf-highlighter

react-pdf-tailwind

react-pdf-tailwind is not exactly a PDF generator or renderer. It’s more of a utility tool that allows you to style PDF documents created with libraries such as the react-pdf library using Tailwind utility classes.

Since it’s built on Tailwind, it undergoes constant updates. It has over 400 stars on GitHub and 6K+ weekly downloads on npm. The react-pdf-tailwind library is basically a wrapper for Tailwind, so it doesn’t have any distinct features other than to style PDF documents using Tailwind utility classes.

Quickstart command:

npm i react-pdf-tailwind

react-print-pdf

react-print-pdf is an across-the-board solution for creating PDF documents in a React application. Unlike other solutions, react-print-pdf gives you full control over your document’s layout. You can design complex and customized layouts with features like footnotes, headers, margins, and more.

This open source package has good community support, undergoes constant updates, and has over 400+ stars on GitHub.

Features of react-print-pdf:

• Footnotes
• Latex support
• Tailwind integration
• Markdown support
• Display dynamic values

Quickstart command:

npm install @onedoc/react-print

Conclusion

In this article, we covered the fundamentals of the react-pdf library. Not only is it secure and robust, but it is also lightweight, thus bringing performance to the table.

Thank you so much for reading! Happy coding!