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Renders HTML into the browser's canvas

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Quick Overview

rasterizeHTML.js is a JavaScript library that allows you to render HTML into an image directly in the browser. It uses HTML5 canvas to create a pixel-based representation of the HTML content, making it useful for generating thumbnails, screenshots, or converting HTML to image formats.

Pros

  • Runs entirely in the browser, no server-side processing required
  • Supports rendering of external resources like images and stylesheets
  • Handles complex layouts and CSS styling
  • Provides a simple API for easy integration

Cons

  • May have performance limitations with very large or complex HTML documents
  • Doesn't support all CSS features, especially newer ones
  • Limited support for interactive elements and JavaScript-driven content
  • Resulting image quality may not be as high as server-side rendering solutions

Code Examples

  1. Basic usage to render HTML to canvas:
rasterizeHTML.drawHTML('<div>Hello, World!</div>', canvas)
  .then(function (result) {
    console.log('Rendering completed');
  }, function (error) {
    console.error('Rendering failed:', error);
  });
  1. Rendering a URL to an image:
rasterizeHTML.drawURL('https://example.com', canvas)
  .then(function (result) {
    var img = new Image();
    img.src = canvas.toDataURL();
    document.body.appendChild(img);
  });
  1. Rendering with custom options:
rasterizeHTML.drawHTML('<div>Styled content</div>', canvas, {
  baseUrl: 'http://example.com/',
  width: 320,
  height: 480,
  zoom: 2,
  active: '.myActiveClass'
}).then(function (result) {
  console.log('Rendering completed with custom options');
});

Getting Started

  1. Install rasterizeHTML.js via npm:
npm install rasterizehtml
  1. Include the library in your HTML:
<script src="node_modules/rasterizehtml/dist/rasterizeHTML.allinone.js"></script>
  1. Create a canvas element and use the library:
<canvas id="canvas"></canvas>
<script>
  var canvas = document.getElementById('canvas');
  rasterizeHTML.drawHTML('<div>Hello, rasterizeHTML.js!</div>', canvas)
    .then(function (result) {
      console.log('Rendering completed');
    });
</script>

This setup allows you to start using rasterizeHTML.js to render HTML content into images directly in the browser.

Competitor Comparisons

Screenshots with JavaScript

Pros of html2canvas

  • More active development and larger community support
  • Better handling of complex CSS layouts and transformations
  • Supports a wider range of HTML elements and CSS properties

Cons of html2canvas

  • Slower rendering performance for large or complex pages
  • Less accurate font rendering in some cases
  • May struggle with certain SVG elements and animations

Code Comparison

html2canvas:

html2canvas(document.body).then(function(canvas) {
    document.body.appendChild(canvas);
});

rasterizeHTML.js:

rasterizeHTML.drawHTML('<div>Hello, World!</div>', canvas)
    .then(function success(renderResult) {
        // Use renderResult.image
    }, function error(e) {
        // Handle any errors
    });

Both libraries aim to render HTML content to canvas, but html2canvas focuses on capturing the current state of the DOM, while rasterizeHTML.js can render arbitrary HTML strings. html2canvas is generally more suitable for screenshot-like functionality, whereas rasterizeHTML.js is better for rendering small HTML snippets or documents.

html2canvas has more stars and contributors on GitHub, indicating a larger user base and potentially more frequent updates. However, rasterizeHTML.js may offer better performance for simpler use cases and more accurate font rendering in some scenarios.

When choosing between the two, consider your specific requirements, the complexity of the HTML you need to render, and the level of community support you require.

Generates an image from a DOM node using HTML5 canvas

Pros of dom-to-image

  • Supports a wider range of CSS properties and styling
  • Generally faster rendering, especially for complex DOM structures
  • Better handling of external resources like images and fonts

Cons of dom-to-image

  • Less consistent cross-browser compatibility
  • May struggle with certain SVG elements and animations
  • Limited options for customizing the output format

Code Comparison

dom-to-image:

domtoimage.toPng(node)
    .then(function (dataUrl) {
        var img = new Image();
        img.src = dataUrl;
        document.body.appendChild(img);
    });

rasterizeHTML.js:

rasterizeHTML.drawHTML('<div>Hello, world!</div>', canvas)
    .then(function (renderResult) {
        document.body.appendChild(renderResult.image);
    });

Both libraries aim to convert HTML content into images, but they differ in their approach and capabilities. dom-to-image focuses on capturing the current state of a DOM node, while rasterizeHTML.js can render arbitrary HTML strings. The code examples demonstrate the basic usage of each library, with dom-to-image working directly with existing DOM elements and rasterizeHTML.js accepting HTML as a string input.

✂️ Generates an image from a DOM node using HTML5 canvas and SVG.

Pros of html-to-image

  • More active development and maintenance
  • Supports a wider range of modern browsers
  • Better performance for complex DOM structures

Cons of html-to-image

  • Larger file size and more dependencies
  • Less support for older browsers
  • May have issues with certain CSS properties

Code Comparison

rasterizeHTML.js:

rasterizeHTML.drawHTML('<div>Hello, World!</div>', canvas)
  .then(function success(renderResult) {
    // Use the rendered canvas
  }, function error(e) {
    // Handle any errors
  });

html-to-image:

import htmlToImage from 'html-to-image';

htmlToImage.toPng(document.getElementById('my-node'))
  .then(function (dataUrl) {
    var img = new Image();
    img.src = dataUrl;
    document.body.appendChild(img);
  })
  .catch(function (error) {
    console.error('oops, something went wrong!', error);
  });

Both libraries aim to convert HTML to images, but html-to-image offers more modern syntax and better integration with current web development practices. rasterizeHTML.js provides a simpler API but may be less suitable for complex, modern web applications. The choice between the two depends on specific project requirements, browser support needs, and performance considerations.

An HTML5 saveAs() FileSaver implementation

Pros of FileSaver.js

  • Lightweight and focused on a single task (saving files)
  • Cross-browser compatibility for file saving
  • Easy to integrate into existing projects

Cons of FileSaver.js

  • Limited functionality compared to rasterizeHTML.js
  • Not suitable for rendering HTML to images

Code Comparison

FileSaver.js:

var blob = new Blob(["Hello, world!"], {type: "text/plain;charset=utf-8"});
saveAs(blob, "hello world.txt");

rasterizeHTML.js:

rasterizeHTML.drawHTML('<div>Hello, world!</div>', canvas).then(function (result) {
    console.log("Rendered in " + result.executionTime + " milliseconds");
});

Summary

FileSaver.js is a lightweight library focused on saving files across different browsers. It's easy to use and integrate but has limited functionality compared to rasterizeHTML.js. On the other hand, rasterizeHTML.js is designed for rendering HTML to images, offering more complex functionality but with a different purpose. The choice between these libraries depends on the specific needs of your project - file saving or HTML rendering.

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Client-side JavaScript PDF generation for everyone.

Pros of jsPDF

  • Focused on PDF generation, offering more advanced PDF-specific features
  • Larger community and more frequent updates
  • Can generate PDFs entirely client-side without server interaction

Cons of jsPDF

  • Limited to PDF output, less versatile for other image formats
  • Steeper learning curve for complex PDF layouts
  • Larger file size and potentially slower performance for simple use cases

Code Comparison

rasterizeHTML.js:

rasterizeHTML.drawHTML('<div>Hello, World!</div>', canvas)
  .then(function success(renderResult) {
    // Use the rendered canvas
  }, function error(e) {
    console.error(e);
  });

jsPDF:

var doc = new jsPDF();
doc.text('Hello, World!', 10, 10);
doc.save('hello-world.pdf');

Summary

While rasterizeHTML.js focuses on converting HTML to images, jsPDF specializes in PDF generation. jsPDF offers more PDF-specific features and has a larger community, but it's limited to PDF output and may have a steeper learning curve. rasterizeHTML.js is more versatile for general HTML-to-image conversion but lacks advanced PDF capabilities. The choice between them depends on whether you need specific PDF features or more general-purpose HTML rendering.

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README

rasterizeHTML.js

NPM version

Renders HTML into the browser's canvas.

See the API.

Install

$ npm install rasterizehtml

Then include a script tag with node_modules/rasterizehtml/dist/rasterizeHTML.allinone.js or require through browserify.

Example

var canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
rasterizeHTML.drawHTML('Some ' +
                       '<span style="color: green; font-size: 20px;">HTML</span>' +
                       ' with an image <img src="someimg.png">',
                       canvas);

See the examples page. The code also ships with examples, make sure to run npm test first to compile the library.

How does it work

For security reasons rendering HTML into a canvas is severly limited. Firefox offers such a function via ctx.drawWindow(), but only with Chrome privileges (see https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Drawing_Graphics_with_Canvas).

As described in http://robert.ocallahan.org/2011/11/drawing-dom-content-to-canvas.html and https://developer.mozilla.org/en/HTML/Canvas/Drawing_DOM_objects_into_a_canvas however it is possible by embedding the HTML into an SVG image as a <foreignObject> and then drawing the resulting image via ctx.drawImage().

In addition SVG is not allowed to link to external resources and so rasterizeHTML.js will load external images, fonts and stylesheets and store them inline via data: URIs (or inline style elements respectively).

Limitations

All resources (HTML page, CSS, images, fonts and JS) that are needed for drawing the page can only be loaded if from the same origin, unless techniques like CORS are used. I.E. drawURL() can only load pages from the same domain as the current page and all draw methods can equally only embed styling and images from that domain.

The code is tested under Firefox, Chrome & Safari.

There's basic support for Microsoft Edge, however it will not work under any version of Internet Explorer.

Also the individual browsers still have some issues when rendering SVGs with embedded HTML to the canvas.

The full list of limitations is here.

TypeScript

Import type definitions as follows:

import * as rasterizeHTML from 'rasterizehtml';

Development

Run npm test.

For tests against individual browsers run python3 -m http.server and open http://localhost:8000/test/SpecRunner.html.

Where is it used?

  • CSS Critic, a lightweight tool for regression testing of Cascading Style Sheets
  • ...

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