🚀 [New Plugin] PDF Creator

[nextwall22]

Sorry, what I meant was filtering data within the repeating group.

画面収録 2024-07-02 22.26.40.mov

[alexcooney5]

Thanks for clarifying @nextwall22.

PDF Potion maybe isn’t the best for this. It looks like you want the user to be able to generate the PDF as they filter the products. When generating PDFs with PDF Potion, you need to design the PDF in a separate page of your Bubble app. While you could dynamically send data to the separate page to only display the products you want to PDF, I would probably recommend looking elsewhere

Sorry I can’t be of more help!

[nalsey]

Hi Alex,

Great plugin.

Regarding this issue from @xavier1 - I’ve discovered this only happens for right-aligned inputs. left-aligning them makes the value appear in the PDF, however since I’m displaying $ figures, I need them right-aligned. Could you please advise if this is fixable?

Also, specifying ‘my-image’ for the footer left content prevents the generating from happening completely (I have a png uploaded for the footer image). In other words, as long as ‘my-image’ is in one of those two fields, nothing happens when I click generate.

your help is appreciated.

Regards,
Ben

[alexcooney5]

Hi @nalsey, thanks for using my plugin!

That’s some nice investigative work on the right-alignment issue. I haven’t quite been able to replicate it on my side, so I’m going to send you a private message requesting access to your editor to try and understand what’s different to your setup vs. mine.

The image in the footer causing the PDF not to generate is an issue I’ve become aware of over the past week or so. I’m currently working on a fix, but in the meantime can you try using a smaller sized image (in file size terms) and see if that makes a difference?

[yarikzyzy12]

Hi! Thanks for yout great plugin! It is really good!

I have one small issue: how to display on a pdf document elements that are not always visible (collapse when hidden). They are visible before PDF create action but for some reason they do not appear in the pdf file

[yarikzyzy12]

My biggest pain is: I have long text (like 15 a4 pages). It is an agreement that I try to turn into pdf but weirdly it gives output of plenty of empty pdf pages. Myabe you have a show case for really long text being converted into pdf? Would really appreciate any advice! Thanks for your work

[alexcooney5]

Hi @yarikzyzy12, thanks for the kind words and sorry for these issues.

I’m going to send you a private message shortly requesting access to your editor so I can take a closer look at this

[alexcooney5]

Creating PDFs with Chinese characters - August-24 update
Some people who have been using PDF Creator to create PDFs containing traditional Chinese characters have come across formatting issues where the characters are overlapping and not properly aligned. EG see below:

The solution to this is to use a font that is designed to be compatible with traditional Chinese characters. For example, if you use the Noto Sans Traditional Chinese font, you will be able to generate PDFs with traditional Chinese characters without problems:

The output PDF:

Please note that Bubble does not come with the Noto Sans Traditional Chinese font by default. You will have to upload it as a custom font. You can see instructions on how to do this here.

Notes:

• You do not have to use the Noto Sans Traditional Chinese font; you can also use any other font that is designed to be compatible with traditional Chinese characters.
• The plugin documentation has also been updated with these instructions.

Any questions just let me know

[michal.friedrich]

Very common issue. This plugin is great for most of the tasks you would usually required. But it fails on pages where you have to load more data in repeating groups as it has the roof of 30 second buffer (which is not even the equivalent of 5 seconds in native bubble load) and it fails to build aggregate pictures into PDFs. But as a simple page to PDF it’s a go to solution.

[alexcooney5]

Thanks @michal.friedrich, I think this is a fair and reasonable comment.

PDF Creator is very reliable for most PDF use cases, but I’ll admit that it can sometimes struggle if you’re generating very large PDFs with repeating groups. I’m actively working on improving this aspect of the plugin.

For now, if you’re generating large PDFs, I would recommend our PDF Potion solution. It’s more powerful than PDF Creator and is designed to be able to handle very large PDFs in bulk. We have customers who have generated PDFs > 100 pages in length and others who generate 1,000’s of PDFs per month without issue.

That said, I still want to improve how PDF Creator handles long PDFs, as I appreciate that PDF Potion is a more expensive solution.

Any further feedback or questions, please do let me know

[alexcooney5]

Improved handling of images - August-24 update
Just a quick note to say that I recently released a new version of the plugin (version 1.21.0), that has improved handling of images.

There was previously an issue where if the ‘Run-mode rendering’ on an image was set to ‘zoom’ or ‘rescale’, the image sometimes became distorted in the PDF - this should now be fixed.

Any questions just let me know

[timmarcie]

Many thanks for the quick fix on this Alex. It did solve my issue.
Now I’ve run into another problem which has been mentioned above. The PDF creator renders all white pdf when it’s longer than 4 pages. Unless there’s a quick fix coming up for this, I’ll be looking into the PDF Potion solution.

Many thanks again!

Tim

[alexcooney5]

Hi Tim, what scale value are you using for the ‘Generate PDF Creator’ action?

I’m conscious you have quite a few images in your PDF. This could lead to a very large file size for the PDF if a high scale value is used, which can cause issues.

To be honest, PDF Potion is probably better suited to your use case, as it’s specifically designed to handle large custom reports

[matanmoshe88]

Hi,
Im using the plugin but it seems that when using vertical scrolling on element for UI purposes the pdf doesn’t capture all the text in the element and im getting pdf only with part of the content in the group.

I also tried to duplicate the scrolling element and hide it and use it with full layout but when im executing the generrate pdf action on the duplicated element im getting an empty pdf.

Is there any solution to handle this issue?

Thanks

[alexcooney5]

Hi @matanmoshe88, thanks for using our plugin and sorry for this issue.

One question and one suggestion:

Is the text within the element with the vertical scrolling element fully visible in your app? Or is only part of the text visible? In general PDF Creator will try and replicate the layout of what’s actually in your app.

My suggestion would be to set a larger min height on the text element itself. Can you try that and let me know if it helps?

[matanmoshe88]

Hi Alex,
Thanks for your answer,

Im not sure if i understand your questions.

None of the text is hidden by the preperty settings but some text is shown only when your scroll down - that the idea of vertical scrolling.(No?!)

About your suggestion - i dont have any option to increase the min height cuz its already on the buttom in mobile.

I sent you a fulll video in dm’s i think it will be better to chatting there.

Thanks

[alexcooney5]

Thanks @matanmoshe88, I’ve responded to your dm

[alexcooney5]

Charts - September-24 Update
Just a quick note to say that the most recent version of PDF Creator is compatible with the Simple Doughnut Chart plugin:

PDF Creator isn’t compatible with all charts libraries by default, but I’ve built in functionality so that it should work with most of the popular charts plugins out there.

If you’re using a charts plugin that doesn’t seem to be working with PDF Creator, let me know and I’ll do what I can to add in the compatibility

[faisalkarimstubapp]

Hi @alexcooney5 , is it possible to have below footer’s page counter?

[alexcooney5]

Hi @faisalkarimstubapp, thanks for using PDF Creator!

I’m afraid it’s not possible to add any additional lines to the footer right now.

I do have it on my to-do list to add greater flexibility to headers/footers, but I haven’t gotten around to it just yet.

Sorry about that - not sure when I’ll be able to get to that feature, but I’ll let you know if I do!