🧪 Launching PDF Potion: Solving the PDF Problem

alexcooney5 · May 29, 2024, 11:28am

Creating PDFs in Bubble a pain. Sure, there are a range of plugins available, but they all come with limitations.

The element(s) you’re PDF-ing needs to be visible on the page
It’s really hard to get perfect page breaks
You can’t generate PDFs in backend workflows

Today I’m officially launching PDF Potion to solve the PDF problem once and for all!

Links

What makes PDF Potion different?

Create PDFs of ‘hidden’ pages
PDF Potion allows you to design PDFs in one page of your Bubble app and then let your users create PDFs of that page from any other page. This gives you full control over how your PDF looks and feels.

Perfect page breaks
PDF Potion comes with a number of options for adding page breaks. You can add page breaks to specific elements, add breaks only if an element is going to be split across multiple pages (‘Smart Breaks’) and ensure each cell of a repeating group starts on a new page.

Create PDFs in backend workflows
PDF Potion can be used in backend workflows. This allows you to create PDFs immediately, or schedule them for later.

Other lovely stuff
Create PDFs that respect privacy rules
Use dynamic data
Headers and footers can be added to each page of your PDF (including logos and automatic page numbers)

FAQ

How do I add PDF Potion to my Bubble app?
You’ll need to: 1) Register for an account at https://pdfpotion.com and get an access token, 2) Install the PDF Potion plugin, 3) Add your access token to the PDF Potion plugin fields. You can read more about how to get started here.

How much does it cost?
There’s a free plan that allows you to create 50 PDFs a month. There are also a range of paid plans, with the cost dependant on how many PDFs you create a month.

Do you use a 3rd party server?
Yes, PDF Potion uses an AWS server.

Is my data secure?
Yes, data security is taken very seriously. PDF Potion does not save down any of the PDFs created to our own database. Certain information is retained in the PDF Potion logs for 24 hours, before being automatically deleted.

Does PDF Potion respect privacy rules?
Yes, you can 'run as a certain user’ by using the Magic Link field that comes with the ‘Create PDF’ action. See this video for a demo.

I have a question / support query. How can I contact you?
No problem. You can either leave a comment on this thread or contact Cranford Tech via this link.

Resources:
Please note that this is just the current list of help articles/tutorials. I plan to continue adding to this over time, so please check out https://docs.pdfpotion.com/ if you can’t find an answer to your question from the below list.

Articles:

Video tutorials:

How to create a detailed PDF (complete guide and recommended for starting out)
Create a PDF of a hidden page (shorter quickstart version)
Creating PDFs with dynamic data (and privacy rule compatibility)
3 tips for perfect page breaks in PDFs

If you have any questions, let me know!

Alex
Cranford Tech

hi.luisacosta · May 29, 2024, 2:47pm

Checking this out

That was my first question!

alexcooney5 · May 29, 2024, 3:02pm

Great to hear @hi.luisacosta

If you have any questions just let me know!

martijntenpas · May 29, 2024, 4:59pm

Can you share the pricing for PDF creation?

alexcooney5 · May 30, 2024, 10:57am

Hi @martijntenpas, thanks for your interest in PDF Potion

You can see full details of pricing on our pricing page.

If you have any other questions just let me know.

MattN · May 31, 2024, 2:14pm

Hey @alexcooney5 nice work on this!

Do you have a standard data processing agreement for GDPR/privacy purposes?

Asking because of the AWS server.

Thanks!

fede.bubble · May 31, 2024, 3:06pm

Thanks for sharing!

alexcooney5 · June 3, 2024, 11:35am

June-24 updates
PDF Potion now returns the PDF file size when returning the ‘link’ and ‘id’.

All you need to do is:

Add a number field to your ‘Report’ data type (or whatever custom data type you’re using)
Add a key called ‘size’ to the backend workflow you’re using to process the PDF. This key returns the size of the PDF in bytes

Save the value returned by the ‘size’ key to your ‘Report’ data type. In this example, I’ve divided the value by 1,000 so that I have the value in KBs

Note: Strangely, I noticed there’s a small difference in the file size value returned by PDF Potion vs. what you’ll see in the ‘File Manager’ section of your Bubble database. However, whenever I download the file to my computer, its file size matches the PDF Potion value (not the Bubble File Manager value).

Any questions just let me know

alexcooney5 · June 4, 2024, 2:24pm

@MattN I know we discussed this via private message, but just wanted to follow up here for anyone else that’s wondering about a Data Processing Agreement.

PDF Potion’s Data Processing Agreement can be found here. If you require a signed copy, you can email me (alex@cranfordtech.com) and I’ll arrange to have one sent to you.
The Cranford Tech Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy also contain some information regarding PDF Potion that may be a useful reference (see the sections marked ‘PDF Potion’ in both documents)

Any questions just let me know!

alexcooney5 · June 18, 2024, 2:28pm

June-24 update - compress your PDF
Just released a new version (1.2.0) of the PDF Potion plugin that comes with an option to compress your PDF. This can be useful for large PDFs that contain a lot of images/charts.

To compress your PDF, simply set the ‘Compress’ field to ‘yes’ when running the ‘Create PDF’ workflow action:

Note: It’s always worth experimenting before making a decision on whether or not you need to compress your PDF. Setting the ‘Compress’ field to ‘yes’ will reduce the file size, but this may also have a (small) impact on the quality of your PDF.

The PDF Potion documentation has also been updated.

Any questions, just let me know!

alexcooney5 · June 27, 2024, 3:41pm

(more) June-24 updates
It was (very correctly!) pointed out to me that the current onboarding video is wayyyyy too long.

To help people get up and running with PDF Potion faster, I put together this quickstart guide:

Any questions just let me know

alexcooney5 · July 5, 2024, 9:33am

Landscape PDFs - July-24 Update
Small update: you can now generate PDFs in landscape!

Simply choose between ‘Portrait’ and ‘Landscape’ when using the ‘Create PDF’ action:

Any questions just let me know

dr.sumit.periwal · July 14, 2024, 7:23pm

How is this PDF Potion? The pricing plan for this is very expensive . Anyone has any suggestion for good pdf tool that is efficient, cost effective for countries like India, and generates PDFs with ease.

Even Bubble is considering a native PDF generation tool

alexcooney5 · July 19, 2024, 11:38am

Custom PDF dimensions - July-24 update
Just released a new version of the PDF Potion plugin (version 1.4.0). You can now set custom dimensions for your PDF in the ‘Create PDF’ action by:

Choosing ‘Custom’ for the Format and
Selecting your dimensions in the new ‘CUSTOM FORMAT’ section

For the unit, you can choose from inches (‘in’), centimetres (‘cm’), millimeters (‘mm’) or pixels (‘px’).

Any questions just let me know

alexcooney5 · July 29, 2024, 2:22pm

Creating PDFs that respect privacy rules
Just published a new support doc for PDF Potion on how to create PDFs that respect privacy rules.

Any questions just let me know

rocha58.pedro · August 25, 2024, 9:59pm

Hi @alexcooney5 i’m using PDF Potion and i’m trying to build a PDF for a page which has a repeating group inside another repeating group. Both repeating groups must apear in the PDF. Is it posible to build something like this?

alexcooney5 · August 26, 2024, 7:06am

Hi @rocha58.pedro, yes this is absolutely possible with PDF Potion

Let me know if you’ve any specific problems doing this and I’ll do what I can to help!

rocha58.pedro · August 27, 2024, 11:43pm

Hi, I made this example below to you.

I build a checklist feature. The user has some items to respond and its possible to add photos and comments.

For the page which generates the PDF, i build a main repeating group which loads the items and a second and a third repeating groups (inside the main repeanting group) which loads the photos and comments.

The problem is: when the PDF is genereted only the main repeating group is recognized. Both second and third doesnt appears.

Can i fix that? How?

Let me know if i made myself clear.

alexcooney5 · August 28, 2024, 7:27am

Thanks for those details @rocha58.pedro!

I can’t say for sure why repeating groups #2 and #3 aren’t appearing without seeing your editor setup, but a few thoughts:

Does the repeating group rely on dynamic data? If so, are you instructing PDF Potion to create a PDF with dynamic data (as outlined in this video)?
Have you checked the ‘Show all items immediately’ options on the repeating groups?
Have you added the ID attributes for repeating groups #2 and #3 to the ‘Repeating Groups’ field on the ‘Create PDF’ action?

Hope that’s all some help

alexcooney5 · September 24, 2024, 7:33pm

Increase the quality of images in your PDF - September-24 update
No more blurry images!

The ‘Create PDF’ action in the latest version of PDF Potion comes with a new field called ‘Device Scale Factor’. The higher the value you choose for this field, the higher the resolution of the images in your PDF.

We’ve already had customers report a significant increase in the clarity of images in their PDFs after using this feature.

PDF Potion’s documentation has been updated to include details on how to use this new feature.

Any questions just let me know