Note: this is for the original question, as well as for others who may be visiting this for related help, as was the case with me. ;)
Answer:
You may try: Poppler or pdf2htmlEX which is based on Poppler.
I'd recommend looking at the pdf2htmlEX documentation it also has as very good comparison table.
Answer from Asad Malik on Stack Overflow
» npm install pdf2html
Note: this is for the original question, as well as for others who may be visiting this for related help, as was the case with me. ;)
Answer:
You may try: Poppler or pdf2htmlEX which is based on Poppler.
I'd recommend looking at the pdf2htmlEX documentation it also has as very good comparison table.
pdf.js renders to Canvas so it can't be used to statically convert a PDF to HTML
Videos
jsPDF is able to use plugins. In order to enable it to print HTML, you have to include certain plugins and therefore have to do the following:
- Go to https://github.com/MrRio/jsPDF and download the latest Version.
- Include the following Scripts in your project:
- jspdf.js
- jspdf.plugin.from_html.js
- jspdf.plugin.split_text_to_size.js
- jspdf.plugin.standard_fonts_metrics.js
If you want to ignore certain elements, you have to mark them with an ID, which you can then ignore in a special element handler of jsPDF. Therefore your HTML should look like this:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<p id="ignorePDF">don't print this to pdf</p>
<div>
<p><font size="3" color="red">print this to pdf</font></p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Then you use the following JavaScript code to open the created PDF in a PopUp:
var doc = new jsPDF();
var elementHandler = {
'#ignorePDF': function (element, renderer) {
return true;
}
};
var source = window.document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0];
doc.fromHTML(
source,
15,
15,
{
'width': 180,'elementHandlers': elementHandler
});
doc.output("dataurlnewwindow");
For me this created a nice and tidy PDF that only included the line 'print this to pdf'.
Please note that the special element handlers only deal with IDs in the current version, which is also stated in a GitHub Issue. It states:
Because the matching is done against every element in the node tree, my desire was to make it as fast as possible. In that case, it meant "Only element IDs are matched" The element IDs are still done in jQuery style "#id", but it does not mean that all jQuery selectors are supported.
Therefore replacing '#ignorePDF' with class selectors like '.ignorePDF' did not work for me. Instead you will have to add the same handler for each and every element, which you want to ignore like:
var elementHandler = {
'#ignoreElement': function (element, renderer) {
return true;
},
'#anotherIdToBeIgnored': function (element, renderer) {
return true;
}
};
From the examples it is also stated that it is possible to select tags like 'a' or 'li'. That might be a little bit to unrestrictive for the most usecases though:
We support special element handlers. Register them with jQuery-style ID selector for either ID or node name. ("#iAmID", "div", "span" etc.) There is no support for any other type of selectors (class, of compound) at this time.
One very important thing to add is that you lose all your style information (CSS). Luckily jsPDF is able to nicely format h1, h2, h3 etc., which was enough for my purposes. Additionally it will only print text within text nodes, which means that it will not print the values of textareas and the like. Example:
<body>
<ul>
<!-- This is printed as the element contains a textnode -->
<li>Print me!</li>
</ul>
<div>
<!-- This is not printed because jsPDF doesn't deal with the value attribute -->
<input type="text" value="Please print me, too!">
</div>
</body>
This is the simple solution. This works for me. You can use the javascript print concept and simple save this as pdf.
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title></title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$("#btnPrint").live("click", function () {
var divContents = $("#dvContainer").html();
var printWindow = window.open('', '', 'height=400,width=800');
printWindow.document.write('<html><head><title>DIV Contents</title>');
printWindow.document.write('</head><body >');
printWindow.document.write(divContents);
printWindow.document.write('</body></html>');
printWindow.document.close();
printWindow.print();
});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1">
<div id="dvContainer">
This content needs to be printed.
</div>
<input type="button" value="Print Div Contents" id="btnPrint" />
</form>
</body>
</html>
Currently for a client I am building a script to convert PDF into HTML fitting their CMS. We also do this conversion on DOCX (to HTML) and that goes wel. But PDF is a whole other format and less of a document format and more of a layout format. What would be the most efficient way to convert PDF to HTML in a format that strips the layout as much as possible, but for example keeps all markup (such as bold/italic texts), images, etc.
Does anyone have experience with this kind of conversion? I can use recommendations and advice!
Things I have tried:
-
pdf2htmlEX: Very elegant for normal conversions for users in the browser, but it is so elegant that it keeps the layout, strips tags and put them as styling (CSS) and converts tables to background images; not something useful for me
-
pdftohtml: Not the most pretty output, disregards tables, puts a lot of
<br/>tags into the HTML.
Things I still want to try:
-
Parsr: [EDIT] After some experience with Parsr, it might be exactly what I am looking for. And it seems it's capable of Markdown conversion (haven't seen it working yet), that would mean I can easily convert to HTML. [EDIT 2] This tool is performing amazingly well!