šŸš€ [New Plugin] PDF Creator

November-23 Updates

Recently released a small quality of life improvement that allows you to break repeating groups (and regular groups) up into smaller sub-groups using square brackets ([ & ]). This makes it much cleaner to create a PDF of a repeating group that spans multiple pages.

I go through how to use this feature in the below tutorial:

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(more) November-23 Updates

You can now add headers (including a company logo) to your PDF!

2023-11-30 09.44.55

Thereā€™s also a tutorial video that shows how to do this:

Iā€™ve also broken the ā€˜When PDF Creator recordedā€™ event into two separate events:

  • When PDF Creator downloaded
  • When PDF Creator saved to database

This will allow users to better distinguish between the two events.

December-23 Updates

Just released an updated version of the plugin that means SVG icons and images can now be generated without issue (a common problem with Bubble PDF plugins).

2023-12-14 10.31.42

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This is an awesome and badly needed plugin. Thanks for building this. I just ran across this by accident, and itā€™s actually perfect timing.

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Great to hear @gnelson :slightly_smiling_face: If you have any questions just let me know!

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I do.

So the [Page Breaks] must be predetermined? On some documents content grows, but not in a predetermined location. So letā€™s say for example that we two groups of data. One at the top, and another at the bottom. Under most circumstances both groups would print on the same pdf page. Occasionally, one of the groups would grow so that both wonā€™t fit on a single page. With other plugins Iā€™ve tried, the bottom group would break where what would still fit on page one would appear, and the overflow on the second page. Iā€™m looking for a ā€œsmartā€ (for lack of a better word) [Page Break] that would in the above case move the entire bottom group to the next page.

Does your plugin do this?

Thanks again,
George

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@gnelson, yes my plugin will cleanly break the two groups onto two pages of the second grows to the point where it would otherwise overlaps on two pages.

If this is likely to occur, I STRONGLY recommending ID Attributes to all groups, rather than just having one master group.

You may have already seen it, but the below video is useful for understanding the mechanics of overflowing groups:

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Than you. I will try this out. Iā€™ve already subscribed to the plugin. Looking forward to what I think this will be able to do. PDFā€™s have been a huge limiting factor for the things that I tend to build.

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(more) December-23 Updates

Just released a new version of the plugin that lets you specify the exact width and height (in px) of the PDF you are creating.

image

To enable this, set the ā€˜Formatā€™ to ā€˜customā€™ and then choose the width and height dimensions in the ā€˜Custom Dimensionsā€™ field.

Great PDF plugin! Would it be possible to pull the image file for header/footer in a dynamic manner? Eg if I wanted to allow a user, as an option, to add a header image to a generated pdf?

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Thanks for the kind words and feedback @jeffery :slight_smile:

Nice idea. Iā€™ll put it on the list of things to consider implementing. May not get around to it for a couple of weeks due to the holidays, but will keep you updated!

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Hello,

I just downloaded this plugin. It appears to be exactly what I need. Unfortunately with my first use Iā€™m getting the error message shown below.

image

Iā€™m using it with the @alex4 plugin linked below because its not functioning correctly when it comes to saving the generated canvas. I was hoping I could get around that and also save a step and convert it directly to pdf, which is my ultimate goal.

Any idea the cause of this? Your plugin works correctly when I use it with other elements.

Thanks for your help here! Great plugin!

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Hi @GEN, thanks for the kind words and will do my very best to get to the bottom of this. Iā€™m going to send you a private message to get full details of the issue.

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Hi @alexcooney5 ,

Just downloaded the plugin, and Iā€™m trying to send a nested repeating group
and I keep getting the following error
image

Perhaps something Iā€™m doing wrong?

Hi @Tholley, thanks for using my plugin and sorry that youā€™re having issues with it. Its quite difficult for me to debug the issue without seeing the editor - Iā€™m going to send you a private message now and hopefully we can get to the bottom of it :slightly_smiling_face:

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Just wanted to drop a quick note here to say that this issue has now been fixed. There was a problem with generating PDFs of repeating groups with icons in them, but the latest version of the plugin addresses this and all works as expected.

Thank you @Tholley for initially flagging the issue.

January-24 update

Just released ā€˜The ultimate guide to creating PDFs in Bubbleā€™ which is a detailed video tutorial on how to use the PDF Creator plugin:

Topics covered include:

  • Creating simple 1-page PDFs
  • Creating more complex PDFs that span multiple pages and include repeating groups
  • Creating custom reports with headers and footers
  • Saving PDFs to your Bubble database and allowing users to access them
  • Customising your PDFs (filename, quality/size, margins, orientation)
  • Adding loading screens when creating PDFs and other UX tips

(more) January-24 updates

Just published detailed documentation for the PDF Creator plugin! You can view it here:

In particular, I want to highlight the ā€˜How the plugin scales elements to the PDF pageā€™ section. This is a common question from users, so hopefully this helps people understand how the width/height of elements on the PDF are decided :slight_smile:

(more) January-24 updates

Just released a tutorial video on how to send PDFs via email using the PDF Creator plugin:

Hey! Awesome plugin but I am seeing one critical issue. When I run the workflow, the output pdf seems to not print any dynamic images - they are just blank. It also seems to force the page element that it is printing from, to also no longer show those dynamic imagesā€¦

Any idea what that could be?