Export SVG elements to PDF?

Question

I have a visualization generated by d3 (a javascript visualization library similar to Protovis or Raphael, which draws stuff using SVG elements). The vis is interactive, so the

Answer 1

I do not know of any strong PDF libraries on the client side.

A quick possible way would be to send the svg content to a server, and use something like batik for java to turn the svg to pdf and then send the response to the client again.

Here is a related SO for the converstion.

Answer 2

I did not try d3, but I achieved the effect you are looking for like this in Python3.6:

# Pdf library
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
from reportlab.graphics import renderPDF, renderPM

# Svg library
import svgwrite

# Svg to reportlab
from svglib.svglib import svg2rlg, SvgRenderer

# Xml parser
from lxml import etree

# Create the svg
dwg = svgwrite.Drawing('test.svg', profile='tiny')
dwg.add(dwg.line((0, 0), (10, 10), stroke=svgwrite.rgb(10, 10, 16, '%')))
dwg.add(dwg.text('Test', insert=(0, 0.2)))

# Create canvas for pdf
c = canvas.Canvas("output.pdf")

# Parse the xml of the svg
parser = etree.XMLParser(remove_comments=True, recover=True)
root = etree.fromstring(dwg.tostring())

# Render the svg itself
svgRenderer = SvgRenderer()
drawing = svgRenderer.render(root)

# Now render the drawing in the pdf
renderPDF.draw(drawing , c, 10, 10)

# End page and save pdf file
c.showPage()
c.save()

# Or render to a seperate png
renderPM.drawToFile(drawing, "file.png", fmt="PNG")

Reportlab is an open source pdf library and svglib is a library that is able to convert svg's to reportlab Drawings. Rendering svg's directly from the xml is not supported out of the box, that is why I use the SvgRenderer.

Answer 3

PhantomJS can also rasterize url/html to PDF. Same backend (QTWebKit) with wkhtml2pdf.

Answer 4

There's also wkhtml2pdf, which can render anything webkit can as a PDF. If you want to render a combination of SVG and HTML, or want to have some JavaScript run before the PDF snapshot is taken, it's great for that.

• http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/