5 ms·

PDFmyURL.com - Convert and save pdf from any webpage for free

39 points by matt1 17y ago

timf 17y ago
I'd seen this kind of thing before but voted up after checking out the 'advanced options' section. After some googling of those "man page" style options, I see now this is probably a web wrapper around [1] so I will more likely integrate that program directly into something I'm working on. But still bookmarking the site for quick jobs. [1] - http://github.com/antialize/wkhtmltopdf http://github.com/antialize/wkhtmltopdf
- matt1 17y ago
  I've been researching ways to print the timelines on my site, Preceden. There's a complicated mix of HTML and CSS and, needless to say, it doesn't print by simply clicking Print on the browser: http://preceden.com/timelines/2-biographies/print http://preceden.com/timelines/2-biographies/print This is an awesome tool because I can just add a link to the conversion URL, and wam bam: printing capabilities. I have to tweak the CSS on the print page a bit because the site renders it a bit differently than the browser, but it works really well.
- patio11 17y ago
  Ooh -- if that works I could do my dashboards in HTML/CSS, print them to PDF, convert the PDF to an image file, and use that. That would make my life much easier, as producing the PDFs directly is a bit of a kludge. Thanks, I'll have to look into that later.
  - roam 17y ago
    You should have a look at Flying Saucer/xhtmlrenderer (https://xhtmlrenderer.dev.java.net/ https://xhtmlrenderer.dev.java.net/). It handles every CSS rule I could throw at it. If you simply need a commandline app converting a XHTML file into a PDF, you're done in 10 lines of code.
nirmal 17y ago
I'm glad to see the print-media-type option but it's not close enough to what I get when I print a page and then "Save As PDF" in Safari or Chrome. http://pdfmyurl.com?url=nirmalpatel.com/cv.html&-O=Portrait&--print-media-type http://pdfmyurl.com?url=nirmalpatel.com/cv.html&-O=Portr... vs http://nirmalpatel.com/docs/Nirmal_Patel_CV.pdf http://nirmalpatel.com/docs/Nirmal_Patel_CV.pdf
JayNeely 17y ago
Even better than a bookmarklet, make it so that anyone can type your URL in front of the one they want PDFed, and it will do so automatically. e.g. http://pdfmyurl.com/news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190151 http://pdfmyurl.com/news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190151 Aviary.com does this for site screenshots, and I love it.
- nirmal 17y ago
  I first heard of this mechanic when digg launched their ill-received url shortening service. I wish all url shortening services did this. As far as the bookmarklet goes it would be nice if you could set some of the common options, page-size, orientation, with some nice checkboxes, like Readability (http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/).
grannyg00se 17y ago
This is impressive. If there was an option to have the link destinations on the requested page also included in the PDF, that would be even better. That way we could specify hacker news as the site, then all of the comments pages and stories would be included in the PDF as well.
tompaton 17y ago
Very nice, will be adding "print to pdf" support to my site post haste.
simplegeek 17y ago
Nice job guys. This is off-topic but do you guys know of a good library to convert HTML to PDF (Python)? I'm wondering how did guys at pdfmyurl.com did it? Any ideas
- jgresula 17y ago
  Have a look at http://pdfcrowd.com http://pdfcrowd.com - it is a service providing an html to pdf online API and it has bindings for python. It is in private beta now, so if you are interested please just contact me and I will send you an invitation key.
  - simplegeek 17y ago
    Hmm, looks good. Cannot find your email in your profile, can you kindly let me know your email? Or can you email me at rolf.oltmans@gmail.com. Thank you.
- keshet 17y ago
  You can try pisa (xhtml2pdf) here: http://www.xhtml2pdf.com/ http://www.xhtml2pdf.com/ Pretty robust. I am having some trouble with bidirectional support, but otherwise looks good - it's an all-python solution.
  - simplegeek 17y ago
    I just tried it and it isn't working very well for some HTML pages. But thanks,anyway.
WalkingDead 17y ago
For offline version I had been using this application for some time now... WebKit HTML to PDF http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/ http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/ This is a PDF generator which uses WebKit engine to render the HTML page and then converts to PDF. Has command line advanced options, like this site.
- spaceman77 17y ago
  that is one awesome tool, simply powerful thank you for the tip.
whalesalad 17y ago
No offense to the op but this is another reason why I prefer OS X to any other operating system.. this stuff is built in. You can print any site right to PDF from any browser (as it's an OS feature). No Adobe needed.
- daremon 17y ago
  Try doing that with your Mac OS X and http://www.woothemes.com/demo/dailyedition/ http://www.woothemes.com/demo/dailyedition/ Does it work correctly? pdfmyurl.com does and so do a few more online such services.
  - nirmal 17y ago
    Safari allows me to save my site, mentioned below, to PDF perfectly but also fails on your link and the opposite is true for pdfmyurl.com. Edit: It appears to be the advanced option "print-media-type" that is the problem. Browsers do it by default and if you have pdfmyurl.com use it, the link you posted will look bad. I suspect that this would not be a problem if the theme did not restrict its CSS to "screen". I believe all of the CSS is dumped by the browser when printing because of this directive. The fonts are still correct so the link tags without media attributes probably have those CSS rules.
daremon 17y ago
Excellent work - congratulations! Even ignoring the advanced options your converter is fast and produces accurate results! Very well done!
goodgoblin 17y ago
Anyone know of a similar service that can handle MS-Office type documents?

39 points by matt1 17y ago

timf 17y ago

I'd seen this kind of thing before but voted up after checking out the 'advanced options' section. After some googling of those "man page" style options, I see now this is probably a web wrapper around [1] so I will more likely integrate that program directly into something I'm working on. But still bookmarking the site for quick jobs. [1] - http://github.com/antialize/wkhtmltopdf http://github.com/antialize/wkhtmltopdf

matt1 17y ago
I've been researching ways to print the timelines on my site, Preceden. There's a complicated mix of HTML and CSS and, needless to say, it doesn't print by simply clicking Print on the browser: http://preceden.com/timelines/2-biographies/print http://preceden.com/timelines/2-biographies/print This is an awesome tool because I can just add a link to the conversion URL, and wam bam: printing capabilities. I have to tweak the CSS on the print page a bit because the site renders it a bit differently than the browser, but it works really well.
patio11 17y ago
Ooh -- if that works I could do my dashboards in HTML/CSS, print them to PDF, convert the PDF to an image file, and use that. That would make my life much easier, as producing the PDFs directly is a bit of a kludge. Thanks, I'll have to look into that later.
- roam 17y ago
  You should have a look at Flying Saucer/xhtmlrenderer (https://xhtmlrenderer.dev.java.net/ https://xhtmlrenderer.dev.java.net/). It handles every CSS rule I could throw at it. If you simply need a commandline app converting a XHTML file into a PDF, you're done in 10 lines of code.

nirmal 17y ago

I'm glad to see the print-media-type option but it's not close enough to what I get when I print a page and then "Save As PDF" in Safari or Chrome. http://pdfmyurl.com?url=nirmalpatel.com/cv.html&-O=Portrait&--print-media-type http://pdfmyurl.com?url=nirmalpatel.com/cv.html&-O=Portr... vs http://nirmalpatel.com/docs/Nirmal_Patel_CV.pdf http://nirmalpatel.com/docs/Nirmal_Patel_CV.pdf

JayNeely 17y ago

Even better than a bookmarklet, make it so that anyone can type your URL in front of the one they want PDFed, and it will do so automatically. e.g. http://pdfmyurl.com/news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190151 http://pdfmyurl.com/news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190151 Aviary.com does this for site screenshots, and I love it.

nirmal 17y ago
I first heard of this mechanic when digg launched their ill-received url shortening service. I wish all url shortening services did this. As far as the bookmarklet goes it would be nice if you could set some of the common options, page-size, orientation, with some nice checkboxes, like Readability (http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/).

grannyg00se 17y ago

This is impressive. If there was an option to have the link destinations on the requested page also included in the PDF, that would be even better. That way we could specify hacker news as the site, then all of the comments pages and stories would be included in the PDF as well.

tompaton 17y ago

Very nice, will be adding "print to pdf" support to my site post haste.

simplegeek 17y ago

Nice job guys. This is off-topic but do you guys know of a good library to convert HTML to PDF (Python)? I'm wondering how did guys at pdfmyurl.com did it? Any ideas

jgresula 17y ago
Have a look at http://pdfcrowd.com http://pdfcrowd.com - it is a service providing an html to pdf online API and it has bindings for python. It is in private beta now, so if you are interested please just contact me and I will send you an invitation key.
- simplegeek 17y ago
  Hmm, looks good. Cannot find your email in your profile, can you kindly let me know your email? Or can you email me at rolf.oltmans@gmail.com. Thank you.
keshet 17y ago
You can try pisa (xhtml2pdf) here: http://www.xhtml2pdf.com/ http://www.xhtml2pdf.com/ Pretty robust. I am having some trouble with bidirectional support, but otherwise looks good - it's an all-python solution.
- simplegeek 17y ago
  I just tried it and it isn't working very well for some HTML pages. But thanks,anyway.

WalkingDead 17y ago

For offline version I had been using this application for some time now... WebKit HTML to PDF http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/ http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/ This is a PDF generator which uses WebKit engine to render the HTML page and then converts to PDF. Has command line advanced options, like this site.

spaceman77 17y ago
that is one awesome tool, simply powerful thank you for the tip.

whalesalad 17y ago

No offense to the op but this is another reason why I prefer OS X to any other operating system.. this stuff is built in. You can print any site right to PDF from any browser (as it's an OS feature). No Adobe needed.

daremon 17y ago
Try doing that with your Mac OS X and http://www.woothemes.com/demo/dailyedition/ http://www.woothemes.com/demo/dailyedition/ Does it work correctly? pdfmyurl.com does and so do a few more online such services.
- nirmal 17y ago
  Safari allows me to save my site, mentioned below, to PDF perfectly but also fails on your link and the opposite is true for pdfmyurl.com. Edit: It appears to be the advanced option "print-media-type" that is the problem. Browsers do it by default and if you have pdfmyurl.com use it, the link you posted will look bad. I suspect that this would not be a problem if the theme did not restrict its CSS to "screen". I believe all of the CSS is dumped by the browser when printing because of this directive. The fonts are still correct so the link tags without media attributes probably have those CSS rules.

daremon 17y ago

Excellent work - congratulations! Even ignoring the advanced options your converter is fast and produces accurate results! Very well done!

goodgoblin 17y ago

Anyone know of a similar service that can handle MS-Office type documents?