Question 215732 in Javascript Question posted in
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Javascript – How to to generate a PDF/A file in Node.js?

I have to generate a PDF/A-3 file for a Node.js project. I want to either be able to generate a PDF/A-3 file from scratch or convert an existing file to PDF/A-3.

I haven’t found a simple/straightforward way to do that so far.

I have checked libraries like pdfkit, jsPDF, pdf-lib etc… But they don’t seem to provide a simple interface to get PDF/A-3 files.

I have also tried directly modifying the PDF metadata with pdfkit by following an example tagged in this github issue, but the pdf I get does not pass PDF/A compliance tests.

Some paying libraries like pspdfkit and apryse seem to have utilities to do that, but they’re not free.

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2

Answers


  1. 0

    Welcome to Stackoverflow Charles,

    try the following code:

    // This Node.js project will generate a PDF/A-3 file from scratch or convert an existing file to PDF/A-3.

// Require the necessary modules
const fs = require('fs');
const pdf = require('pdfkit');
const pdfa = require('pdf-a');

// Create a function to generate a PDF/A-3 file from scratch
function generatePDF() {
  // Create a new PDF document
  const doc = new pdf();

  // Add content to the PDF document
  doc.text('This is a PDF/A-3 file.');

  // Create a writable stream
  const writableStream = fs.createWriteStream('my-pdf.pdf');

  // Pipe the PDF document to the writable stream
  doc.pipe(writableStream);

  // End the PDF document
  doc.end();

  // Convert the PDF document to PDF/A-3
  pdfa.convert(writableStream, 'my-pdf.pdf', 'pdfa-3');
}

// Create a function to convert an existing file to PDF/A-3
function convertToPDF() {
  // Read the existing file
  const readableStream = fs.createReadStream('my-file.txt');

  // Create a writable stream
  const writableStream = fs.createWriteStream('my-pdf.pdf');

  // Convert the existing file to PDF/A-3
  pdfa.convert(readableStream, writableStream, 'pdfa-3');
}

// Call the functions
generatePDF();
convertToPDF();

    If this helps please up-vote it and accept the answer.

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  2. 0

    Use npm install pdf-lib

    Now, create a Node.js script and use the pdf-lib library to generate the PDF/A file:

    const { PDFDocument, rgb, StandardFonts } = require('pdf-lib');
const fs = require('fs');

async function generatePDFA() {
  // Create a new PDF/A document
  const pdfDoc = await PDFDocument.create();

  // Set the PDF/A version to PDF/A-2B (PDF/A version 2, Level B)
  pdfDoc.setPDFVersion(2);

  // Add a new page
  const page = pdfDoc.addPage([595, 842]); // Default PDF page size: A4 (in points)

  // Get the built-in Helvetica font
  const font = await pdfDoc.embedFont(StandardFonts.Helvetica);

  // Add text to the page
  const text = 'Hello, PDF/A!';
  const { width, height } = font.widthOfTextAtSize(text, 24);
  page.drawText(text, {
    x: 50,
    y: 800,
    size: 24,
    font: font,
    color: rgb(0, 0, 0), // Black color
  });

  // Serialize the PDF/A document to a Uint8Array
  const pdfBytes = await pdfDoc.save();

  // Save the PDF/A to a file
  fs.writeFileSync('output.pdf', pdfBytes);
}

generatePDFA().catch((err) => console.log('Error:', err.message));
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