pdf generation using html-pdf npm package , deploy on AWS as a GET api

Question

I am able to generate a pdf using html-pdf in nodejs locally on my mac. The minute I deploy the my GET api using serverless on AWS everything fails. The pdf does not get generated and I get 400 bad request and message as

I changed version of the html-pdf package , tried installing fontmanager but nothing helped.

//pdf generation class
{
.....
const pdfSettings = {
                "border": '1cm',
                "header": {
                    "height": "15mm"
                }
            };

            const PDFBuffer = new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
                pdf.create(pdfContent, pdfSettings).toBuffer(
                    (err, buffer) => {
                        err ? reject(err) : resolve(buffer);
                    });
            });

            const buffer = await PDFBuffer;
            return actions.downloadPDF(contactId, buffer);
}

//function which returns pdf in binary to api gateway
downloadPDF(pdfName, pdfBuffer) {

    let responseObj = {
      statusCode: 200,
      isBase64Encoded: true,
      headers: {
        'Content-type': 'application/pdf',
        'accept-ranges': 'bytes',
        'Content-Disposition': 'attachment; filename=' + pdfName + '.pdf'
      },
      body: pdfBuffer && JSON.stringify(pdfBuffer.toString('base64'))
    }
    return responseObj;
  }

I should be able to generate pdf using the GET api in AWS. Please let me know any valuable suggestion that could help me with this issue. Thanks in advance

Answer 1

faced the same issue with html-pdf on aws ubuntu and here is what I did.

test html-pdf package using the example:

root@APP-AP-1A-01:/home/user01/server-a7# node node_modules/html-pdf/bin/index.js node_modules/html-pdf/examples/businesscard/businesscard.html /tmp/test-prod.pdf
/home/user01/server-a7/node_modules/html-pdf/bin/index.js:30
    if (err) throw err
             ^

Error: html-pdf: Received the exit code '127'
/home/user01/server-a7/node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt/lib/phantom/bin/phantomjs: error while loading shared libraries: libfontconfig.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

    at ChildProcess.respond (/home/user01/server-a7/node_modules/html-pdf/lib/pdf.js:121:31)
    at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:210:5)
    at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (internal/child_process.js:272:12)

^ this error was seen on Aws running Ubuntu (4.4.0-1072-aws) and it was due to missing library phantomjs is dependent on; the npm -i did not install/ update it quite well on the server.

Here are the steps:

1. ldd - print shared object dependencies (note that it flagged, libfontconfig.so.1 => not found)
2. install the missing library (apt-get install fontconfig)
3. check the dependencies again using ldd
4. run the example and this time it created the pdf from html

run as root user or use sudo :-

root@APP-AP-1A-01:/home/user01/server-a7# ldd /home/user01/server-a7/node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt/lib/phantom/bin/phantomjs
        linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007ffea155d000)
        libz.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0x00007fd639645000)
        libfontconfig.so.1 => not found
        libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6 (0x00007fd63939b000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007fd639197000)
        librt.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0x00007fd638f8f000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007fd638d72000)
        libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007fd6389f0000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007fd6386e7000)
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007fd6384d1000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007fd638107000)
        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fd63985f000)
        libpng12.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpng12.so.0 (0x00007fd637ee2000)

root@APP-AP-1A-01:/home/user01/server-a7# ls -l /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfontconfig.so.1
ls: cannot access '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfontconfig.so.1': No such file or directory

root@APP-AP-1A-01:/home/user01/server-a7# apt-get install fontconfig
Reading package lists... Done
:
The following additional packages will be installed:
  fontconfig-config fonts-dejavu-core libfontconfig1
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  fontconfig fontconfig-config fonts-dejavu-core libfontconfig1
:
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
Get:1 http://ap-south-1.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 fonts-dejavu-core all 2.35-1 [1,039 kB]
Get:2 http://ap-south-1.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 fontconfig-config all 2.11.94-0ubuntu1.1 [49.9 kB]
Get:3 http://ap-south-1.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 libfontconfig1 amd64 2.11.94-0ubuntu1.1 [131 kB]
Get:4 http://ap-south-1.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 fontconfig amd64 2.11.94-0ubuntu1.1 [178 kB]
Fetched 1,398 kB in 1s (928 kB/s)
:
:
Regenerating fonts cache... done.
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.23-0ubuntu11.2) ...

root@APP-AP-1A-01:/home/user01/server-a7# ldd /home/user01/server-a7/node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt/lib/phantom/bin/phantomjs
        linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007ffcdf49c000)
        libz.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0x00007f65a4723000)
        libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfontconfig.so.1 (0x00007f65a44e0000)
        libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6 (0x00007f65a4236000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f65a4032000)
        librt.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0x00007f65a3e2a000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f65a3c0d000)
        libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f65a388b000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007f65a3582000)
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f65a336c000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f65a2fa2000)
        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f65a493d000)
        libexpat.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1 (0x00007f65a2d79000)
        libpng12.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpng12.so.0 (0x00007f65a2b54000)

root@APP-AP-1A-01:/home/user01/server-a7# node node_modules/html-pdf/bin/index.js node_modules/html-pdf/examples/businesscard/businesscard.html /tmp/test-prod.pdf

root@APP-AP-1A-01:/home/user01/server-a7# ls -lrt /tmp/test-prod.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11250 Jul 10 10:05 /tmp/test-prod.pdf

created the pdf in /tmp/test-prod.pdf

Answer 2

I was able to reach a better solution by using puppeteer library. Reasons for choosing a different library

html-pdf is deprecated

puppeteer has much better options

puppeteer has async/await feature

Although to make this work in AWS with serverless & serverless-plugin-optimize , I did face many challenges. Note out the following points while implementing this kind of similar scenario

Binary Media Types should be set to */* in API Gateway resource Settings options , if going through serverless under provider in serverless.yaml add provider 下通过添加

if by any chance you are using serverless-plugin-optimize to reduce lambda size , use "external" option for this package chrome-aws-lambda , ref link https://www.npmjs.com/package/serverless-plugin-optimize