🚀 [New Plugin] PDF Creator

[alexcooney5]

Add dynamic images to PDF header / footer (beta feature) - February-25 update
Just released version 2.1.4 of PDF Creator! You can now reference dynamic images in the header / footer content fields:

A common use case for this will be to let users add their own company logo to PDFs:

You can see an example of this and detailed instructions in this new page of our demo app here (link to the editor is here).

Some things to be aware of with this new feature:

• It’s a beta release - if you spot any issues please send me a DM or email support@cranfordtech.com
• Currently only PNG or JPEG images are supported (not SVGs)
• You can define the width / height of the image in the ‘Width’ and ‘Height’ fields at the bottom of the ‘Generate PDF Creator’ action

Any questions just let me know

cc @jeffery (I know you asked about this feature previously)

[alexcooney5]

Make PDF files private - February-25 update
Just released version 2.3.1 of PDF Creator. You can now make PDF files generated by PDF Creator private:

Full details available in this section of the plugin documentation.

Any questions let me know

[amitshemla]

Hi! great plugin thank you! i am trying to download a simple group, everything is working but the image is not visable on the PDF, it is visable on page load without any issue. What can be the issues? Thank you! @alexcooney5

[alexcooney5]

Hi @amitshemla thanks for the kind words and sorry you’re having this issue.

What kind of image is it? (.png, .svg, .jpeg, other)

[amitshemla]

It’s a png but i just noticed that if i am entering this URL of the image, then there is an automatic download of the image (and you can’t see it in the url of the browser)
I have two more images (that if you go to the URL you can see them) that working without any issue,
Do you know maybe how can i fix it?
THANKS!

[alexcooney5]

Thanks for those details @amitshemla - sounds like there’s something unusal going on.

I’m going to send you a private message shortly asking for access to your editor - that way I can take a closer look and figure out the issue.

[alexcooney5]

How to create a PDF of a group - April-25 update
Just released a beginner friendly tutorial on how to create a PDF of a group using PDF Creator.

How to create a PDF of a group - Bubble.io tutorial

Any questions just let me know

[faisalkarimstubapp]

Hi @alexcooney5

My pdf creator suddenly not working, with below error in the browser console. What could be the cause?

[faisalkarimstubapp]

When I switch footer image from static to dynamic using option set, it’s all good.

[mloveland33]

@alexcooney5 Great plugin. Quick question on multiple pages.

I setup the following in a popup. Title Group and Repeating Group. Each group has the element id and that’s working, but they are both wanting to stack to the top of the page. This only happens when the Repeating group doesn’t page break itself when it’s greater than 20 rows or so. Have you ever seen this behavior?

Settings:

PDF Output when only a few rows in RG:

Natural Page break when RG runs off page (My desired output when there are only a few rows in the RG) I want the page break to happen no matter the number of rows in the RG:

Thank you for the plugin and your help figuring this out.

[alexcooney5]

Hey @mloveland33 , thansk for using my plugin and sorry you’re having this issue.

Would you able to:

1. Try running this with the orientation set to ‘Portrait’?
2. Remove the from the RG ID?

I know you’ll want both these features active, but temporarily removing them will hopefully help us narrow down the source of the issue.

Let me know if that makes a difference

Alex

[mloveland33]

That didn’t make a difference, but I was able to get it to work with a different approach!

I used element ID [RG] in brackets and for the first row (index 1) I added a group that contained the header data I wanted and only visible when index = 1, collapse height when hidden.

So instead of having two element Id’s split by comma, I put everything I needed in the RG and did brackets for the array of individual elements in the RG. This plugin rocks

Thanks for the reply!

[alexcooney5]

Thanks for trying that @mloveland33 and appreciate you sharing your solution

I’m going to try and re-create your original setup and see if I can figure out what was going wrong, but glad you got it working as needed.

[luke.ford]

Great plugin, looks awesome and going to save a lot of time.

Question - when creating the group to pdf do you have to set it to a page size to get it to fit the page? Can you do a hidden group so the user doesn’t see the group first that’s getting printed?

[alexcooney5]

Thanks for the kind words @luke.ford.

@luke.ford

when creating the group to pdf do you have to set it to a page size to get it to fit the page?

No, you don’t have to set a group to a page size to get into fit the page. If you leave the max width of the group as ‘inf’, PDF Creator will automatically fit that group to the width of the page.

This doc describes how PDF Creator scales elements to the PDF page - might be useful.

@luke.ford

Can you do a hidden group so the user doesn’t see the group first that’s getting printed?

The group has to be visible on the page (or more precisely, visible in the DOM) for PDF Creator to create a PDF of it. I have seen some users do the following:

• Hide the group by default
• Add a ‘yes/no’ custom state called ‘pdfGenerating’ and set the default to ‘no’
• Put a condition on the group so that it’s visible when the custom state is ‘yes’
• When the user triggers the PDF generation workflow, change the custom state to ‘yes’
• This shows the group and allows PDF Creator to create a PDF of it
• When the PDF generation is completed, change the custom state to ‘no’; this will hide the group again

You could also add a loading screen (via a floating group) so that the user doesn’t see this showing/hiding happening.

Finally, if you want to create a PDF of a hidden group that is more complex, it may be worth considering our other Bubble PDF solution DocuPotion. It allows you to Create PDFs of separate pages in your app.

Hope that helps and let me know if you have any other questions.

[robert]

I have a group that is not visible on page load, but is visible when the PDF Creator is triggered. Yet, I still get the following error: TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading ‘style’)

It appears that PDF Creator will not work with any group that is not ‘visibile on page load’ even when visible at time of PDF workflow.

Please advise.

[alexcooney5]

Hi @robert thanks for using PDF Creator and sorry you’re having this issue.

PDF Creator can generate PDFs of groups that are hidden on page load, but are then made visible. So I suspect there’s something else going on here.

I see you sent an email with more details - I’ll reply to you there with the next steps we can take to figure this out.

Alex