I’m building a workflow web app for construction inspections in bubble. Based on the user answering questions within the web app, I want a PDF of the inspection report to be generated.
I need this PDF report to have very specific styling.
Ultimately I also need the PDF to be saved within Bubble, so the user can retrieve it.
I also need the PDF to be generated and emailed to respective parties via sendgrid in bubble.
Is there a product that does this for free? If so, what?
Probably nothing available for free, I ended up using Bubble’s own plugin they made for SelectPDF integration. They are like 19$/month for 2000 PDF conversions (but I read somewhere a “conversion” is actually 50 pages so you probably get a ton more if your inspections are only a couple pages).
I was able to get it set up to have the exact page layout I wanted and saving the file to the database and everything. Assuming you get Sendgrid setup yes you can email it as well automatically.
The page layout takes some setup but it’s do-able if you pay SelectPDFs price. I ended up paying for the whole year so it’s a little cheaper like 15$/month.
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thank you so so much for the response. This is very helpful for a bubble beginner like myself. Thank you!
Yep let me know if you have questions, I was able to play with SelectPDF with their free 15 day trial key and was able to keep making some more trial keys while I was learning. I would stay away from some of the other PDF converters like the one from Zeroqode, that was was designed to be all client side so if you tried to make a PDF from a phone or something the PDF wouldn’t render correctly because of the users browser window size. The SelectPDF method is all in the “backend” so once someone hits “create PDF” it all runs server-side, can save the file, email it, etc.
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I know with traditional coding, you can convert HTML to PDF for free. Have you looked into creating the form in HTML then converting to PDF within bubble? I’ve been told this is doable, and the PDF creation becomes free.
Yea I think that’s what most of the client-side PDF creator plugins are doing. They are doing it all from the user’s browser and charging the $30 one time price for the plugin pretty much.
I liked the selectPDF because they have their own browser that will look at your page and create a PDF from that, so it’s always the same dimensions and pretty much the same speed. It’s not relying on the end user’s processing speed to convert it.
But yea a free option would be viewing the page and doing CTRL + P and printing to a PDF. Or something made from scratch like you were saying but either way I would imagine it all depends on the client’s window, processing speed?
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You could try this plugin, it’s free and can create images and pdf’s from an element and also, pdf’s from the page
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It’s insanely easy to use and set up as well
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Hi @pattokane ! Thanks so much for the tip. Do you know if you have the ability to create custom PDF styling with this? My PDF output requires very specific styling.
Honestly mate, I only used it yesterday for the image part of but did test the the PDF a little just to see what its like.
I didn’t dive too much into the PDF part but by the sounds of it, it’s only a screen grab converted to PDF but I could be wrong.
If you find that you can customise it please let me know coz that would useful
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PDF conjurer is probably the best plugin to create PDF in Bubble. But the best option for me is to use Integromat (now Make) using a Word template doc and, if needed, use cloudconvert to get a PDF.
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