Introduction
Angular PDF libraries provide a powerful set of features that enable developers to create, display, and manipulate PDF documents, which include an Angular PDF viewer/editor, directly within an Angular application. Which helps us to create PDF files, being a common format for reports, invoices, forms, and downloadable content, their implementation has become an indispensable part of today’s web development.
Since Angular is first and foremost a frontend framework running in the browser, heavy file operations are not natively supported. The developers use third-party PDF libraries designed to run efficiently either on the client or server to meet the needs of users. With the use of PDF libraries, developers achieve various tasks like HTML to PDF conversion, PDF viewing, PDF annotation, search functionality, form filling, and text extraction from PDFs.
pdfmake is an open-source client-side JavaScript library for generating PDFs either in the browser or on the server side with a Node.js application. The library allows the developer to create a PDF consisting of multiple PDF pages through a declarative document definition object, which is a JSON-like structure that describes the content, layout, and style of a PDF.
pdfMake works with Angular, React, Vue, and any other web framework to dynamically generate reports, invoices, forms, and printable documents. This is a pure client-side JavaScript library and, as such, does not need or rely on any external server or backend for PDF generation, including the latest versions of browsers.
Advantages of PDFMake
- Fully free to use under the MIT License.
- Can generate PDFs directly in the browser.
- Works both in Node.js (server-side) and browser environments.
- Great for small to medium documents. which renders fast.
- Content definition and layout based on easy JSON-based structure: e.g., text, tables, images.
- Allows for the following stylings: font, color, alignment, and column.
Disadvantages of PDFMake
- Does not have advanced styling like gradients, shadows, and modern CSS layouts.
- PDFMake cannot render a webpage directly.
- JSON definitions for multi-page or complex layouts tend to get very long and are unwieldy to maintain.
- Generation of big or image-heavy PDFs can be extremely slow or may be heavily memory-intensive.
- No support for advanced PDF features like form fields, annotations, digital signatures, etc.
- Does not directly convert HTML or CSS to PDF. Content needs to be defined in JSON manually.
jsPDF is an open-source JavaScript library that makes generating PDF documents directly in browsers or Node.js environments. It helps us to load and create a PDF viewer component with JavaScript, which is especially useful for tasks like client-side PDF generation and viewing PDFs in Angular, React, and Vue.
jsPDF is created by Parallax, which is one of the most used libraries for generating PDF documents designed for front-end applications. It provides an option to add text, images, tables, shapes, and custom graphics using JavaScript.
Advantages of jsPDF
- Free to use for personal and commercial purposes, licensed under the MIT License.
- Can create PDFs in the browser without a back-end server.
- Compact size allows it to be easily included in web projects.
- Developers can draw text, lines, rectangles, and embed images in various formats: PNG, JPEG.
- It supports plugins, which include autoTable for easy generation of tables in PDF.
- Works both in browser and Node.js environments.
Disadvantages of jsPDF
- Don’t fight with fonts, color, or positioning for intricate design or responsive layout.
- It cannot natively convert existing web pages.
- Generated PDFs may not appear just like the source content, especially when that content has very complex designs.
- Large or high-resolution images can lead to memory issues or a poor quality output.
- Slower to generate multi-page or image-heavy PDFs in the browser.
- It cannot accurately turn complex HTML pages or modern CSS layouts into PDF format.
PDF-LIB is a modern, open-source JavaScript library that enables you to create and edit PDF documents in pure JavaScript, whether in the browser or in Node.js. Unlike libraries like jsPDF or pdfmake, which are designed with the primary purpose of generating PDFs in mind, the focus of PDF-LIB is on manipulating existing PDFs and enhancing their capabilities, such as filling out forms, adding annotations, merging pages, or inserting text and images into preexisting files.
PDF-LIB is a dependency-free, lightweight library that makes use of pure TypeScript, running with no native code or external rendering pdfs engines. It’s used by many front-end applications, such as Angular, React, or Vue, and back-end Node.js services to enable users to control and navigate for document customization and automation.
Advantages of PDF-LIB
- MIT-licensed, freely usable for any of your projects, whether personal or commercial.
- Works seamlessly in browsers and Node.js environments.
- Enables modification of existing documents by inserting text, images, and pages without regeneration of the whole file.
- Does not rely on native binaries or Chromium engines.
- It is smaller in size and more efficient for handling PDF operations.
Disadvantages of PDF-LIB
- It cannot render web pages or HTML/CSS directly to PDF.
- Still relies on manual definition of text and image placements by the designers, which can be hard when designing complex layouts.
- Does not support advanced styling with CSS, fonts, or automatic text wrapping.
- Lacking in browser-level accuracy in rendering.
- Editing or merging very large PDFs can be slow or memory-intensive.
ng2-pdf-viewer is one of the most popular Angular libraries for rendering PDF documents straight inside an Angular application. This library wraps Mozilla’s PDF.js library, which is one of the most powerful browser PDF rendering engines.
This library is not for creating or editing PDFs but rather for providing a simple, fully customizable way to display, zoom, and search PDF documents and navigate them inside Angular components. Some of the common use cases that developers make for ng2-pdf-viewer include embedding PDF reports, invoices, forms, and documents within dashboards or client portals.
Advantages of ng2-pdf-viewer
- Easy to install and integrate into an Angular component.
- Provides reliable, high-quality PDF rendering right in the browser.
- Zoom, rotation, search, pagination, and text selection.
- It works completely in the browser, with no back-end server needed.
- Ideal for applications that only need to display PDFs and are not responsible for their creation.
- Enables the developer to provide a custom toolbar, controls, or features for navigating a PDF.
Disadvantages of ng2-pdf-viewer
- Cannot create, edit, merge, or modify PDFs.
- Slow rendering or lag when working on large or highly image-laden documents.
- Cannot convert HTML content to PDF format.
- PDF rendering may be slower or not quite as smooth on mobile devices.
- Functionality is limited to what PDF.js supports. Does not support annotation, form filling, or digital signatures.
Conclusion
Angular PDF libraries allow developers to create, show, and control PDF documents from modern web applications. Libraries like pdfmake, jsPDF, PDF-LIB, and ng2-pdf-viewer offer flexible solutions for tasks that range from simple PDF creation to advanced editing and viewing.
Each of these libraries has its merits, whether lightweight client-side generation or strong PDF manipulation features. An appropriate choice of an Angular PDF library would be related to complexity, performance, browser compatibility, and the feature set.
All in all, these libraries contribute much to improving user experience by enabling smooth integrations of PDF functionality within applications based on Angular.