TO-DO:

• make template work as a single template with {{handlebars-type syntax}} to be read from cover/data.json and placeholders
• add samples directory with invoice and multi-page document
• update README to explain use as command-line tool and node module
• make into a command-line tool
• change output to document.pdf - DONE

margin

margin creates PDF documents with cover sheets from Markdown, JSON & HTML templates you write.

Installation

To install as a node module:

npm install penrosestudio/margin

To install as a command-line tool:

npm install -g margin
sudo npm install -g margin (if you need admin privileges)

Usage as a command-line tool

margin <path>

margin will inspect the directory path (which can be .) for the following files:

data.json
pages.md
template/
    index.html
    style.css
    <other HTML file assets e.g. JavaScript, fonts>

• data.json is provided to template/index.html using the handlebars templating engine, so any {{handlebars}} syntax is replaced with the corresponding properties from data.json
• pages.md is converted from markdown into HTML, and placed into template/index.html replacing the HTML comment <!-- pages.md -->
• template/index.html is rendered into a PDF called index.pdf

The HTML template, styling & multi-page documents

Because the index.html template file is rendered using Phantom, any valid CSS, JavaScript or fonts are respected during the conversion to PDF.

For example, a technique for creating multi-page documents, where the cover and any <h1> starts its own page is the following:

In the stylesheet:

div.section {
  page-break-after:always;
}
div.main h1 {
  page-break-before:always;
}

In the HTML template:

<div class="section">
  <h1>This is the cover page</h1>
  <h2>{{author}}</h2>
  <p>{{coverContent}}</p>
</div>
<div class="main section">
  <!-- pages.md -->
</div>

In pages.md:

This is a top-level heading - it will start a new page
------------------------------------------------------

This paragraph will be on the same page as the header above.

etc.

This is another top-level heading - it will start a new page
------------------------------------------------------------

This paragraph will be on the same page as the header above.

etc.

Example template

example-template is a folder with an example in - rename it to template to use it.

Usage as a node module

margin makes converting HTML into PDF documents easy:

createPdfFromHTML(pdfPath, html, callback):

var margin = require('margin'),
  pdfPath = './output.pdf',
  html = '<p>some sample HTML, perhaps loaded from a file</p>';

margin.createPdfFromHTML(pdfPath, html, function(err, pdfPath) {
  if(err) {
    return console.error('there was a problem creating the PDF', err);
  }
  console.log('PDF successfully created!');
});

createPdfFromFolder(folderPath, pdfPath, callback):

TO-DO: example or docs here