PDFKit is a PDF document generation library for Node and the browser that makes creating complex, multi-page, printable documents easy.
The API embraces chainability, and includes both low level functions as well as abstractions for higher level functionality. The PDFKit API is designed to be simple, so generating complex documents is often as simple as a few function calls.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Vector graphics:
- HTML5 canvas-like API.
- Path operations.
- SVG path parser for easy path creation.
- Transformations.
- Linear and radial gradients.
- Text:
- Line wrapping (with soft hyphen recognition).
- Text alignments.
- Bulleted lists.
- Font embedding:
- Supports TrueType (.ttf), OpenType (.otf), WOFF, WOFF2, TrueType Collections (.ttc), and Datafork TrueType (.dfont). fonts
- Font subsetting.
- Image embedding:
- Supports JPEG and PNG files (including indexed PNGs, and PNGs with transparency)
- Annotations:
- Links.
- Notes.
- Highlights.
- Underlines.
- etc.
- AcroForms.
- Outlines.
- PDF security:
- Encryption.
- Access privileges (printing, copying, modifying, annotating, form filling, content accessibility, document assembly).
- Accessibility support (marked content, logical structure, Tagged PDF, PDF/UA).
Website: pdfkit.org
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Devon Govett
License: MIT License
PDFKit is written in JavaScript. Learn JavaScript with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| PDF Development Libraries | |
|---|---|
| PDFBox | Create, render, print, split, merge, alter, verify and extract text and metadata |
| TCPDF | PHP class for generating PDF documents |
| Poppler | Library for rendering PDF files, and examining or modifying their structure |
| PDFKit | PDF document generation library for Node and the browser |
| pdfcpu | PDF processing library |
| Apache FOP | Print formatter driven by XSL formatting objects |
| QPDF | Library and programs that inspect and manipulate the structure of PDF files |
| PoDoFo | Parse PDF files and modify their contents into memory |
| OpenPDF | Library for creating and editing PDF files; fork of iText |
| xhtml2pdf | HTML to PDF converter using Python |
| libHaru | Library for generating PDFs |
| CapyPDF | Fully color managed PDF generation library |
| pdf-lib | Create and modify PDF documents in a JavaScript environment |
| PDFio | PDF read/write library |
| PDFsharp | .NET library for processing PDF files |
| JasperReports | Reporting engine written in Java |
| CamlPDF | OCaml library for reading, writing and modifying PDF files |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |

