Generating PDF files from complex HTML
Processor provides a powerful API for generating PDF files directly from HTML strings. The conversion is fast but it only supports simple HTML tags, such as <strong>, <a> or <font>.
If you want to generate a PDF file from a more complex HTML, you can use another technique — save your HTML to a temporary local file first and then generate a PDF file from that URL. PSPDFKit utilises full power of WebKit when generating PDF files from URLs, allowing you to use CSS, embed images or take advantage of a variety of tags and modern HTML costructs — giving you power that isn’t possible with simple HTML to PDF conversion.
Note: Generating PDF files from URLs is a more time- and memory-consuming operation than simple HTML to PDF conversion. Make sure to perform the conversion and opt to do simple HTML to PDF conversion if possible.
ℹ️ Note: Using these APIs requires HTML to PDF Conversion feature in your license.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 | let htmlURL = // URL to save temporary HTML file to. let pdfURL = // URL to save converted PDF file to. let html = """ <html> <head> <style type="text/css"> h1 { color: red; } </style> </head> <body> <h1>Hello, world!</h1> </body> </html> """ do { try html.data(using: .utf8)!.write(to: htmlURL) } catch { // Handle the error. } Processor.generatePDF(from: htmlURL, outputFileURL: pdfURL, options: nil) { outputURL, error in if let outputURL = outputURL { let document = Document(url: outputURL) // Handle the document. } else if let error = error { // Handle the error. } } |
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 | NSURL *htmlURL = // URL to save temporary HTML file to. NSURL *pdfURL = // URL to save converted PDF file to. NSString *html = @"\ <html>\ <head>\ <style type=\"text/css\">\ h1 {\ color: red;\ }\ </style>\ </head>\ <body>\ <h1>Hello, world!</h1>\ </body>\ </html>"; if (![[html dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding] writeToURL:htmlURL atomically:NO]) { // Handle the error. } [PSPDFProcessor generatePDFFromURL:htmlURL outputFileURL:pdfURL options:nil completionBlock:^(NSURL *outputURL, NSError *error) { if (outputURL != nil) { PSPDFDocument *document = [[PSPDFDocument alloc] initWithURL:outputURL]; // Handle the document. } else if (error != nil) { // Handle the error. } }]; |
For more details about how to generate PDF files from HTML strings, URLs and attributed strings, take a look at Processor documentation and ConvertHTMLToPDFExample from our Catalog app.