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Introduction

HST PDF Renderer basically transforms HTML output into PDF output. It leverages Flying Saucer library to generate PDF output. Because Flying Saucer requires valid XHTML input for PDF generation, HST PDF Renderer supports transformation from HTML markups to valid XHTML markups by leveraging JTidy library. HST PDF Renderer also supports a servlet filter which transforms normal HTML output to PDF output at runtime.

License

HST PDF Renderer is provided under the terms of the GNU General Public License, as Flying Saucer is. See the following for detail. 

 HST PDF Renderer is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it 
 under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free 
 Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) 
 any later version.
 
 HST PDF Renderer is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but 
 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY 
 or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
 See the GNU General Public License for more details.
 
 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
 HST PDF Renderer. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Project Status

For the latest version, see the Release notes.

Architecture

HST PDF Renderer contains a servlet filter named 'HtmlPDFRenderingFilter' which transforms HTML output from the SITE application into PDF output. In the following sections, you will see a typical deployment view in a web application and a runtime view which shows how its components are interacting at runtime.

Deployment View

Deployment View
  • Basically HST PDF Renderer is deployed inside a web site application (which is deployed onto a servlet container).
  • You should configure the servlet filter ("HstPDFRenderingFilter") of HST PDF Renderer and its servlet filter mapping in order to activate the automatic PDF generation from the normal html output at runtime.
  • You should configure CSS file(s) for HstPDFRenderingFilter. The CSS file(s) are used when generating PDF output, so you can customize the CSS files for your tastes.

Runtime View

Runtime View
  • The servlet filter, HstPDFRenderingFilter, should be located before the other rendering filters such as HstFilter.
  • HstPDFRenderingFilter invokes the filterChain to invoke the remaining servlet filtr chain and captures all the HTML response output.
  • Then HstPDFRenderingFilter invokes HtmlPDFRenderer, which contains all the core logic for XHTML transformation and PDF generation. (Note: HtmlPDFRenderer can be used separately, even in a stand-alone application.)
  • Then HtmlPDFRenderer cleans up the captured HTML output and transforms it to valid XHTML output, by leveraging JTidy library (org.w3c.tidy.*).
  • Finally HtmlPDFRenderer invokes Flying Saucer library (org.xhtmlrenderer.*) in order to generate PDF output. The PDF output is sent to the user agent through HstPDFRenderingFilter in the end.

Running Demo Application

Check out demo application

Fork me on GitHub: https://github.com/bloomreach-forge/hst-pdf-renderer.

Build the project using Maven: 

$ mvn install

And, build and run the demo in the demo subfolder.

$ cd demo
$ mvn clean package
$ mvn -P cargo.run

Try to click PDF icon button on each detail page in the website, http://localhost:8080/site/.