nightmare-wrapper

nightmarejs wrapper for pdf generation

Currently only works on Linux (tested on Ubuntu 16.04)

Installation & Usage

Headless

Following packages are required. See here for details.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y xvfb x11-xkb-utils xfonts-100dpi xfonts-75dpi xfonts-scalable xfonts-cyrillic x11-apps clang libdbus-1-dev libgtk2.0-dev libnotify-dev libgnome-keyring-dev libgconf2-dev libasound2-dev libcap-dev libcups2-dev libxtst-dev libxss1 libnss3-dev gcc-multilib g++-multilib
export PATH=$PATH:$(pwd)
./npm install nightmare

for RedHat 7

sudo subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-7-server-optional-rpms
sudo yum install xorg-x11-server-Xvfb libXScrnSaver

for Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S xorg-server-xvfb libxi

Common Requirements

Recommended: Use stable LTS node binary from here: https://nodejs.org/en/download/

Tested with node.js v6.9.1 (includes npm 3.10.8) on Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS 64-bit (both server and desktop)

• Create a directory, for example named as nightmareWrapperTryout
• Install nightmarejs npm install nightmare Tested with version 2.10.0
• Copy resources/generatePdf.js, resources/inputDataFile.js and resources/nightmare_wrapper.sh into nightmareWrapperTryout because otherwise it cannot be used as it would be in a jar file at runtime.
• create a symlink to node binary

The directory should be like as follows:

.
└── nightmareWrapperTryout
    ├── node_modules
    ├── node-v6.9.1-linux-x64/
    ├── generatePdf.js
    ├── inputDataFile.js
    ├── nightmare_wrapper.sh
    ├── node -> ./node-v6.9.1-linux-x64/bin/node
    └── npm -> ./node-v6.9.1-linux-x64/bin/npm

Then the directory's full path should be passed as param as follows:

Path directoryPath = Paths.get("/home/user/workspace/nightmareWrapperTryout");
new NightmareWrapper(directoryPath).generatePdf(url, options);

Checking if it works

$ ./nightmare_wrapper.sh generatePdf.js http://kodgemisi.com
  nightmare queuing process start +0ms
optionsFromUser undefined
reportInputFromFile { a: 'deneme' }
reportInputFromCommandLineArgs undefined
  nightmare queueing action "goto" for http://kodgemisi.com +11ms
  nightmare queueing action "evaluate" +1ms
  nightmare queueing action "wait" +0ms
  nightmare queueing action "pdf" +0ms
  nightmare running +1ms
log x7dvs.pdf { '0': 'log',
  '1': 'JQMIGRATE: Migrate is installed, version 1.4.1' }
log x7dvs.pdf { '0': 'error',
  '1': 'onReportDataReady callback is not a function' }
  nightmare electron child process exited with code 0: success! +5s
x7dvs.pdf pdf generation successful

Your generated pdf is in /tmp directory with name x7dvs.pdf. Note that the name is random for this example.

generatePdf(final URL url, Map<String, Object> options, Map<String, Object> data)

url

This is a java.net.URL mainly for url validation purpose. It is the source which will be loaded and then converted to pdf.

options

Optional, may be null. This will be passed as JSON to generatePdf.js.

See below the default options used by generatePdf.js, you can override them by putting some value into the options map:

const defaultOptions = {
  timeout: 1500, //ms

  // possible values, those are case sensitive: [A4, A3, Legal, Letter, Tabloid]
  // https://github.com/electron/electron/blob/v0.35.2/docs/api/web-contents.md#webcontentsprinttopdfoptions-callback
  pageSize: 'A4',
  marginsType: 0, // 0 means default, refer to "electron" documentation link

  // possible values: 'portrait' or 'landscape'
  orientation: 'portrait',

  outputFolder: os.tmpdir(),

  // remember to add '.pdf' suffix when you override this
  outputFileName: randomString(5) + '.pdf',

  // this SHOULD BE WITHOUT 'file://' prefix otherwise cannot find the file
  // this file should contain single, valid json. Check if it's valid via http://jsonlint.com
  inputDataFile: path.join('.', 'inputDataFile.js'),

  // available encodings: https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/v6.9.1/lib/internal/util.js#L141
  inputEncoding: 'utf8',
  
  // request headers
  headers: {}
};

You can override above options as follows:

Map<String, Object> options = new HashMap<>();
options.put("inputDataFile", "/home/user/workspace/data.json");

new NightmareWrapper(directoryPath).generatePdf(templateUrl, options);

data

Optional, may be null. This will be passed as JSON to generatePdf.js. See below Using data from options in the HTML for usage.

Using data from options in the HTML (optional)

If you need to use some data which should be passed by the calling process, you need to create a json file including data. Then need to specify its full path in options as inputDataFile.

By default nightmare-wrapper checks ./inputDataFile.js path to read the file, if it doesn't exist then program continues after logging the situation.

The file should contain single, valid json i.e parsable with JSON.parse. Its content will be parsed via JSON.parse and then passed to onReportDataReady callback.

In the HTML page you need to put your javascript into onReportDataReady as follows in order to use data from inputDataFile:

// dataFromCommandLine is undefined if "data" is null in `generatePdf`
// dataFromFile is undefined if `options.inputDataFile` is not pointing a valid file or left default
window.onReportDataReady = function(dataFromCommandLine, dataFromFile) {
    // your code goes here...
}

Of course you don't need to put any javascipt inside the callback if the code doesn't need any data from inputDataFile.

Troubleshooting

$ ./nightmare_wrapper.sh generatePdf.js http://kodgemisi.com
  nightmare queuing process start +0ms
optionsFromUser undefined
reportInputFromFile { version: '1.0.0' }
reportInputFromCommandLineArgs undefined
  nightmare queueing action "goto" for http://kodgemisi.com +15ms
  nightmare queueing action "evaluate" +2ms
  nightmare queueing action "wait" +0ms
  nightmare queueing action "pdf" +0ms
  nightmare running +1ms
  nightmare electron child process exited with code 127: command not found - you may not have electron installed correctly +26ms
  nightmare electron child process not started yet, skipping kill. +1ms

Check dependencies. For example it might be libxss as per told here

---

$ ./npm install nightmare
/usr/bin/env: ‘node’: No such file or directory

make sure you execute export PATH=$PATH:$(pwd) before npm install