A lightweight C++ library for generating PDFs from HTML using WebKit2GTK.
- Tiny Footprint: Small binary, minimal dependencies
- Image Support: Base64 encodes and inlines images automatically
- Smart CSS: Built-in responsive layout system with visual margin guides
- Easy to Use: Simple C++ API with comprehensive examples
- Automated Tag Closing: Generate HTML directly from the API with self-closing elements
- Easy Variable Data: Integrate C++ data seamlessly into HTML
- Modern Rendering Engine: Uses WebKit2GTK for consistent, up-to-date rendering
Most HTML-to-PDF tools struggle with:
- Margins and page sizing
- Image handling
- Consistent rendering across devices
Our solution fixes these by:
- Using CSS variables to control layout
- Providing visual debugging with border indicators
- Automatically handling common PDF rendering gotchas
We provide pre-built packages for Arch Linux and Debian. These include all necessary configuration files, templates, and system setup.
yay -Syy wkgtk-html2pdfBinaries are here https://git.inplico.uk/releases/wkgtk-html2pdf/Arch/
Install example:
sudo pacman -U wkgtk-html2pdf-0.0.10-0-x86_64.pkg.tar.zstBinaries are here https://git.inplico.uk/releases/wkgtk-html2pdf/Deb/
Install example:
sudo dpkg -i wkgtk-html2pdf_1.0.0_amd64.debNote: Debian Trixie includes version 1.0.0; earlier versions may require the manual package installation above.
Building from source requires manual configuration of:
- CSS templates in
/usr/share/html2pdf - systemd
.servicefile for Xvfb control - polkit rules for passwordless service control on headless systems
- pkg-config (
.pc) file for library discovery - xvfb user and group creation
- User group membership setup
We strongly recommend using the pre-built packages instead. If you need to build from source for an unsupported platform, please open an issue on GitHub.
| Distribution | Version | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Arch Linux | 0.0.10+ | ✓ Fully supported (AUR + direct download) |
| Debian Trixie | 0.0.9+ | ✓ Fully supported (direct download) |
| Debian Bookworm | 0.0.9+ | ✓ Supported (direct download) |
| Ubuntu 22.04+ | 0.0.9+ | ✓ Supported (direct download) |
For quick conversions without writing code:
html2pdf -i infile.html -o outfile.pdf -O portrait -s A4For best results link to the appropriate page template; Place your content inside a page and subpage element and do not overflow the margins (See Guided Templates).
Currently a work in progress, our PDF manual developed entirely with the tools that make up this project is available here https://git.inplico.uk/releases/wkgtk-html2pdf/manual.pdf. Please note however that our Debian release is behind the Arch release due to having to backport the PoDoFo 0.10 code to work with PoDoFo 0.9.
#include <wk2gtkpdf/ichtmltopdf++.h>
#include <wk2gtkpdf/pretty_html.h>
int main() {
icGTK::init();
WEBPAGE html("<!DOCTYPE html>");
html_tree dom("html", html);
html_tree *head = dom->new_node("head");
head->new_node("link", "rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"/usr/share/wk2gtkpdf/A4-portrait.css\"");
html_tree *body = dom.new_node("body");
html_tree *page = body->new_node("div", "class=\"page\"");
html_tree *subpage = page->new_node("div", "class=\"subpage\"");
subpage->new_node("h1")->set_node_content("Hello World");
pretty_html::process_nodes(&dom);
PDFprinter pdf;
pdf.set_param(html, "/tmp/output.pdf");
pdf.layout("A4", "portrait");
pdf.make_pdf();
return 0;
}Note: The PDF will be generated in the current working directory. Use an absolute path if you need output in a specific location.
SOURCES = $(wildcard *.cpp)
HEADERS = $(wildcard *.h)
OBJECTS = $(SOURCES:.cpp=.o)
CXX = g++
CXXFLAGS := -std=c++20 -Wall
CXXFLAGS += $(shell pkg-config --cflags webkit2gtk-4.1)
LDLIBS := -Wl,--start-group
LDLIBS += $(shell pkg-config --libs wk2gtkpdf)
LDLIBS += -Wextra -O2 -m64 -pedantic-errors -Wl,--end-group
hellopdf: $(OBJECTS)
$(CXX) $(CPPFLAGS) $(CXXFLAGS) -o $@ $^ $(LDFLAGS) $(LDLIBS)
%.o: %.cpp
$(CXX) $(CPPFLAGS) $(CXXFLAGS) -c $<
clean:
rm -f $(OBJECTS) helloSimply select a link to the template for the standard US or ISO page size that you wish to print and you have a page set up ready to design your document. (Page margins can be set in the stylesheet).
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/usr/share/icprint/A5-portrait.css">
</head>
<body>
<div class="page">
<div class="subpage">
Hello World
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Additional pages can be added with the declaration of more "page" and "subpage" elements.
- File Output: Write to a specific file path
- Binary Large Objects (BLOBs): Output as BLOBs for integration with APIs like ImageMagick
For issues or feature requests, please open an issue on GitHub.
Note: The documentation assumes you have the necessary system dependencies installed. For a complete list of dependencies, please check the package metadata or the GitHub repository.