Easy HTML to PDF Converter

The project provides a single API endpoint to receive HTML content and convert it to PDF. It also offers options to add details to the generated PDF, such as:

Header
Footer
Page number
Password protection
Font
RTL and LTR support

This is achieved by utilising the headless version of the Chromium browser.

This project is a refactor and upgrade of one I completed in May 2021. Originally written in Java (Spring Boot 2.4.4) and using maven as the package manager, it has undergone several improvements.

One key enhancement was the addition of a UI for OpenAPI. However, before doing this, I needed to upgrade to Spring Boot 3 as a prerequisite.

Upgrade from Spring Boot 2 to 3

Given the small size of my project, the upgrade process was relatively straightforward. For larger projects, significant changes may be required to complete the migration.

In my case, I simply updated the Spring Boot version in my pom.xml file from 2.4.4 to 3.3.2 and made some minor adjustments to the project.

The most substantial change was updating the security configuration from this:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSecurity
public class SecurityConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {
    private final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(SecurityConfig.class);
    
    // some code here

    @Override
    protected void configure(AuthenticationManagerBuilder auth) throws Exception {
        //configure a simple AuthenticationManager with just a single user
        auth.inMemoryAuthentication()
            .passwordEncoder(passwordEncoder())
            .withUser(this.username)
            .password(passwordEncoder().encode(this.password))//the encoded password should be stored.
            .roles("USER");
        logger.info("username created with username: '{}' and password: '{}'", username, password);
    }

    @Override
    protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http.
            authorizeRequests().anyRequest().authenticated() //secure all paths
            .and()
            .csrf().disable()
            .httpBasic()
            .and()
            .sessionManagement().sessionCreationPolicy(SessionCreationPolicy.STATELESS);
    }
}

To this, where a SecurityFilterChain is incorporated:

@Configuration
public class SecurityConfig {
    private final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(SecurityConfig.class);

		// some code here

    @Bean
    public SecurityFilterChain securityFilterChain(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http.
                authorizeHttpRequests((request) ->
                        request.requestMatchers("/**")
                                .permitAll()
                                .anyRequest()
                                .authenticated()

                )
                .csrf(AbstractHttpConfigurer::disable)
                .sessionManagement(sessionMngConfig ->
                        sessionMngConfig.sessionCreationPolicy(SessionCreationPolicy.STATELESS)
                );

        return http.build();
    }

    @Bean
    public UserDetailsService userDetailsService() {
        if (this.username != null && !this.username.isBlank() &&
                this.password != null && !this.password.isBlank()) {
            UserDetails user = User
                    .withUsername(this.username)
                    .password(passwordEncoder().encode(this.password))
                    .roles("USER")
                    .build();

            logger.info("username created with username: '{}' and password: '{}'", username, password);

            return new InMemoryUserDetailsManager(user);
        }
        else return new InMemoryUserDetailsManager();
    }
}

As you can see in both examples, I’ve included an optional user to add a security layer if required by the project. This is a basic security layer where the user is stored only in memory. Its purpose is to restrict API access to trusted microservices or applications.

Another change I made was upgrading Java from version 11 to 22, which was a straightforward update in my pom.xml file as follows:

<properties>
	<java.version>22</java.version>
</properties>

Adding OpenAPI UI to an Existing Spring Boot Application

To add an OpenAPI UI to an existing Spring Boot application, follow these steps:

Ensure your Spring Boot version is at least 3 and your Java version is at least 17.
Add the following dependency, using a newer version if available.

<dependency>
	<groupId>org.springdoc</groupId>
	<artifactId>springdoc-openapi-starter-webmvc-ui</artifactId>
	<version>2.6.0</version>
</dependency>

Add annotations to your API controllers. Here is an example. By default, the return type schema for status code 200 is the return value of your API controller.

@Operation(summary = "Convert HTML to PDF")
@ApiResponses(value = {
        @ApiResponse(responseCode = "200", description = "Successful response"),
        @ApiResponse(responseCode = "400", description = "Bad request"),
})

Now, when you run the project, you can access Swagger UI by navigating to /swagger-ui/index.html. Here’s what it looks like:

Further Improvements

Since Swagger UI provides a better interface between the API endpoints and the consumers, it’s crucial to make it as clear and understandable as possible.

For example, here is my request schema:

{
  "bodyUrl": "string",
  "bodyHtml": "string",
  "bodyStyle": "string",
  "cover": "string",
  "header": "string",
  "footer": "string",
  "paperSize": "string",
  "margin": "string",
  "fontFamilyRTL": "string",
  "fontFamilyLTR": "string",
  "fontSizeRTL": "string",
  "fontSizeLTR": "string",
  "defaultDirection": "string",
  "pageNumberPosition": "string",
  "password": "string"
}

As you can see from the schema, the data type for paperSize is string, even though it only accepts A3, A4, A5, and Letter. It's better to define it as an enum so that it reflects correctly in your Swagger UI.

Another improvement I recommend is to make the enum case-insensitive. Here’s how I’ve done it:

@Getter
public enum PaperSize {
    A3,
    A4,
    A5,
    Letter;

    @JsonCreator
    public static PaperSize fromValue(String value) {
        for (PaperSize paperSize : PaperSize.values()) {
            if (paperSize.toString().equalsIgnoreCase(value)) {
                return paperSize;
            }
        }
        
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid value: " + value + ". Valid values are: A3, A4, A5, and Letter");
    }
}

By doing this, even if a user sends a4 or letter instead of A4 or Letter, it will still work correctly.

More importantly, when users go to the schema tab in Swagger UI, they can see a list of valid values. If they receive a Bad Request response from the API, they can easily double-check the documentation.

How it Works

This microservice uses the headless version of Chromium to convert HTML to PDF, leveraging freely available tools to achieve this goal.

However, Chromium alone isn’t sufficient to meet all the requirements. Additional features include:

Cover: the first page of the PDF.
Header: appears at the top of every page.
Footer: appears at the bottom of every page, similar to the header.
Page Number: can be placed at the top or bottom of each page.
Password: to protect the PDF.

I’ve achieved these features by utilising PDFBox. Here is the dependency:

<dependency>
	<groupId>org.apache.pdfbox</groupId>
	<artifactId>pdfbox</artifactId>
	<version>3.0.0</version>
</dependency>

Docker Image

Lastly, I added a Dockerfile and published the project as a Docker image on Docker Hub under the tag raminyavari/html2pdf:latest.

Here is my Dockerfile:

FROM alpine:latest

ARG BUILD_DATE
ARG VCS_REF

LABEL org.label-schema.build-date=$BUILD_DATE \
    org.label-schema.description="Chrome running in headless mode in a tiny Alpine image" \
    org.label-schema.name="alpine-chrome" \
    org.label-schema.schema-version="1.0.0-rc1" \
    org.label-schema.usage="https://github.com/Zenika/alpine-chrome/blob/master/README.md" \
    org.label-schema.vcs-url="https://github.com/Zenika/alpine-chrome" \
    org.label-schema.vcs-ref=$VCS_REF \
    org.label-schema.vendor="Zenika" \
    org.label-schema.version="latest"

COPY ./ /html2pdf

COPY ./docker/local.conf /etc/fonts/local.conf

RUN apk upgrade -U -a \
    && apk add \
    openjdk22 \
    maven \
    && rm -rf /var/cache/* \
    && mkdir /var/cache/apk

RUN cd /html2pdf \
    && mvn package -DskipTests \
    && cp /html2pdf/target/html2pdf-web-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar /

RUN mkdir -p /usr/src/app \
    && adduser -D chrome \
    && chown -R chrome:chrome /usr/src/app

USER chrome
WORKDIR /usr/src/app

EXPOSE 8080

CMD java -jar /html2pdf-web-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

raminy.dev...

Upgrade from Spring Boot 2 to 3

Adding OpenAPI UI to an Existing Spring Boot Application

Further Improvements

How it Works

Docker Image