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Generate PDFs from complex HTML

Markdown version of this page, suitable for AI agents and automation

Processor provides a powerful API for generating PDF files directly from HTML strings. The conversion is fast, but it only supports simple HTML tags, such as <strong>, <a>, or <font>.

If you want to generate a PDF file from more complex HTML, you can use another technique. First save your HTML to a temporary local file, and then generate a PDF file from that URL. Nutrient utilizes the full power of WebKit when generating PDF files from URLs, allowing you to use CSS, embed images, or take advantage of a variety of tags and modern HTML constructs. This isn’t possible with simple HTML-to-PDF conversion.

Generating PDF files from URLs is a more time- and memory-consuming operation than simple HTML-to-PDF conversion. Make sure to perform the conversion and opt to do simple HTML-to-PDF conversion if possible.

Using these APIs requires the HTML-to-PDF Conversion component in your license.

let htmlURL = // URL to save the temporary HTML file to.
let pdfURL = // URL to save the converted PDF file to.


let html = """
<html>
    <head>
        <style type="text/css">
            h1 {
                color: red;
            }
        </style>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1>Hello, world!</h1>
    </body>
</html>
"""


do {
    try html.data(using: .utf8)!.write(to: htmlURL)
} catch {
    // Handle the error.
}


Processor.generatePDF(from: htmlURL, outputFileURL: pdfURL, options: nil) { outputURL, error in
    if let outputURL = outputURL {
        let document = Document(url: outputURL)
        // Handle the document.
    } else if let error = error {
        // Handle the error.
    }
}

iOS Catalog app showing the generated Example.pdf with Hello, world! rendered in red from HTML

For more details about how to generate PDF files from HTML strings, URLs, and attributed strings, take a look at Processor documentation and ConvertHTMLToPDFExample from our Catalog app.