jsPdf - NestJS "ReferenceError: document is not defined" when using jsPDF's html method

Question

I'm trying to use the jsPDF library to generate a PDF document from an HTML template in a Node.js environment. However, I'm encountering an error:

ReferenceError: document is not defined

Here is the relevent code:

generatePdf(formEntryId: string, customerId: string): ArrayBuffer {
    const template = this.templateService.getTemplate('testPdf')
    const doc = new jsPDF()
    doc.html(template, {
       callback: function (doc) {
       doc.save('testFile.pdf')
    }
  })
  return doc.output('arraybuffer')
}

I understand that this error typically occurs when trying to access the document object in a Node.js environment. However, I'm not directly accessing document in my code. How can I resolve this error and generate the PDF document successfully in a Node.js environment?

Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Answer 1

It looks like using doc.html will end up calling to html2canvas which isn't viable in the node environment. There are a few issues around this problem and it looks like there's no real solution other than running a puppeteer instance (or similar headless environment) and generating the pdf through that