Ask HN: please review my app - html to pdf API (opens in new tab)

Have you thought about the reverse, i.e., a tool that could convert pdfs to html faithfully?

I would be willing to pay money for a reliable tool that didn't need much manual editing after processing.

Unfortunately, the pdftohtml project (http://pdftohtml.sourceforge.net/) has been inactive, and the current version has trouble with even moderately complex layouts.

have you seen this? http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/

Why no PHP API binding?

I can easily see a use for this. I'm doing a pro bono project for a small non profit, and part of the project requires generating simple PDF reports. They don't have any money so we need to keep it low cost.

One of the ways of doing this is to host it on a simple shared server (it's not a heavily used app).

Downside of this is that it's unlikely we'll be able to use any of the PDF tools I've used in the past (since they need to be installed). This should work fine for our purposes.

Thanks, I was wondering how I'd get around this.

To all those who were dissing this because they couldn't immediately see a use for it, try to have a more open mind.

The quality of http://www.princexml.com is amazing. It's not open source and there is a cost to use it commercially (<1K, if I recall). I used it to convert my HTML documentation for Sleep into a camera-ready PDF.

http://sleep.dashnine.org/manual/ - original docs http://sleep.dashnine.org/download/sleep21manual.pdf - result

Well, your default HTML generates one screwey PDF. When viewed in Mac OSX Preview, I get the text "T pe our HTML here..." Then, when I select the text, certain letters get partially removed or overwritten and I end up with gibberish.

I've just spent weeks working on HTML -> PDF conversion code, so I know it's not just my viewer. I've put all kinds of crazy stuff through there.

This is great! The only downside that I saw after converting one of my pages is that the colors dulled substantially.

How much will it cost?

Slick design, but out of curiosity, why wouldn't developers just use http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/ ?

A lot of html to pdf conversion is useless if page-break-* properties are not followed. Shame, too. I've been building something like this all week.

I like it, but my site didn't come out correctly (www.convertyourcds.com). Perhaps my html is screwed up?

Nice execution - as per the comment below, something like this would've saved me lots of manual fiddling back when I was doing lots of PDF stuff.

Given the focus on APIs I guess you're aiming it at those wanting to programmatically generate PDFs using a familiar markup, rather than conversion of existing (static) content into PDF? If so, maybe investigate the ability to overlay rendering onto an existing PDF template at some point - in my experience it's been a common requirement (think form letters, account statements, etc).

Interesting that it appears to execute Javascript; guess it's a sign of the times that you need to in order to render many sites correctly nowadays. I haven't poked it too hard, but suspect there might be one or two security challenges there...

We used an html->pdf conversion service (I believe it was http://www.htm2pdf.co.uk/ but I'm not positive) for awhile to do billing and our biggest problem was that it went down all the time. We ended up purchasing a (pretty cheap) license to a Java library that does pdf generation for us and is pretty easy to use. This is definitely a service that people will pay money to use - best of luck to you!

NICE! You have beat me (and I am sure a dozen others hackers) to the realization of this idea...

Here is an idea for an extra feature: make a print bookmarklet -- clicking on it you get a nice PDF version of the page you are viewing right now. I can't stand firefox's print renditions of some pages... terrible...

(also you might want to set the page size to letter or A4 depending on the geolocation of your visitor's ip address)

Excellent stuff.

I notice there are some questions about how to make money. One may be to position yourself as a way to get PDF reports generated from phone apps, in which case you may want to do per app licensing and provide facilities for email delivery of PDFs.

I could see this being useful porting apps from iPhone (can easily generate PDFs) to Android (which does not appear to support PDF output).

The pdf conversion is awesome! I just tried printing http://times.com/ to a pdf in firefox and it ended up putting the main content of the site on page 2, whereas yours seemed to render it perfectly.

Looks good. I'm keen to use (and pay for) a service like this - if its reliable and quick. With a ruby gem its particularly attractive as all other rails to pdf solutions are incomplete, require a pdf specific dsl or are very expensive.

This is awesome. I'm at once excited about using this in the future, and dismayed thinking of the time I've spent manually generating PDFs because none of the HTML -> PDF options worked.

I fed it my homepage, and it nailed it. I'm impressed.

Haven't tested this, but great idea. I've used a couple of the PDF creation tools and it seems so tedious to build out even a simple table view on a PDF. Good luck with this!

Worked great for me, good job. I'd be interested in a PHP binding too, and knowing what the eventual cost will be.

I tried a relatively complex site - CNN - expecting the results to look bad, but it looks great

Uh, "a2ps file.html"? Doesn't even need an API key...

Why do I need this?