In the world of modern web development, creating dynamic, data-driven websites efficiently is a constant challenge. Template engines have emerged as a crucial tool in a developer's toolkit, streamlining the process of generating HTML content dynamically. This article explores what template engines are, how they work, their benefits, and the most popular options available today.
In this article, we explore API-based PDF generation as a superior alternative to traditional tools like wkhtmltopdf and headless browsers like Playwright and Puppeteer. By leveraging HTML to PDF API solutions, you can streamline your development workflow by eliminating setup complexity and dependency management. Throughout this tutorial, you'll discover the key advantages of API-based conversion over headless browser alternatives and follow a complete Node.js implementation for creating professional invoice PDFs with minimal code. Our practical examples will help you integrate efficient PDF generation into your applications right away.
Generating PDFs has become a crucial feature for many modern web applications, from creating invoices to producing complex data-driven reports. Over the years, various HTML to PDF tools have emerged, each with its own approach and capabilities. In this post, we’ll take a brief look at the evolution of PDF generation solutions – from wkhtmltopdf and PrinceXML (via DocRaptor) to Puppeteer and Playwright – and then walk through a short tutorial on using Playwright (Node.js) to generate a sample PDF in 2025.