HTML to PDF conversion in python with playwright

Table of Contents

• We can convert a HTML to PDF by printing it in a browser window
• playwright is a python module for browser automation that can be used to automate the task of printing a HTML page to pdf in browser
• The required browser (like chromium, Firefox etc.) for automation can also be installed using playwright

Install playwright python module

• python -m pip install pytest-playwright

Install browsers for playwright

• For printing pdf, we are using chromium. Run the following command to install chromium browser for playwright
• python -m playwright install chromium
• For installing other browsers, run the following command to know the possible options
• python -m playwright install --help

Example python script

• The following script converts a local HTML file into a pdf file using python playwright module

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
import pathlib
import os

# convert a relative path of a local file into absolute path
# you can skip this if you have an absolute path like "C:\\Users\\James\\reports\\sales_report.html"
filePath = os.path.abspath("reports/sales_report.html")

# derive the URL path of a local file to be opened in browser
fileUrl = pathlib.Path(filePath).as_uri()

# print the file as a pdf from chromium browser using playwright
with sync_playwright() as p:
    # create a browser instance
    browser = p.chromium.launch()

    # open a new tab in the browser
    page = browser.new_page()

    # goto the URL of the HTML page
    page.goto(fileUrl)

    # change css media type to screen
    page.emulate_media(media="screen")

    # print the html page as pdf in the browser
    page.pdf(path="reports/sales_report.pdf", format="A4",
             landscape=True, margin={"top": "2cm"})
    
    # close the browser
    browser.close()

The above script does the following

• Derive the URL of the HTML file to be printed
• Open the HTML file in a playwright browser tab using the URL
• Print the HTML page as a PDF and save it in the desired location

Video

Video on this post can be seen here

References

• Playwright docs - https://playwright.dev/python/docs/intro
• Playwright pdf function - https://playwright.dev/python/docs/api/class-page#page-pdf