Generate a document with full height in Node with Bent

In this guide, we'll show you how to generate a document with full height dynamically using Node and the Bent library to convert them to PDF using PDFShift's API.

When you're converting a document, you might want to generate a document with full height dynamically. This can be done by setting the format parameter to the request and passing it a custom "auto" value for the {height} part.

const bent = require('bent')
const fs = require('fs');

// You can get an API key at https://pdfshift.io
api_key = 'sk_xxxxxxxxxxxx'

params = {
    source: 'https://www.example.com',
    format: '1280xauto'
}

const post = bent('https://api.pdfshift.io/v3/convert/pdf', 'POST', 'json', 200);
const response = await post('', params, {Authorization: 'Basic ' + Buffer.from('api:' + apiKey).toString('base64')});

if (response.status >= 400) {
    throw new Error(`Request failed with status code ${response.status}: ${response.data}`);
}

const getBuffer = bent('buffer')
fs.writeFileSync('result.pdf', await getBuffer(response));

console.log('The PDF document was generated and saved to result.pdf');

The format parameter can accept various values, such as 'Letter', 'Legal', 'Tabloid', 'Ledger', 'A0', 'A1', 'A2', 'A3', 'A4', 'A5'.

But it can also accept a custom values that is defined per the width and height as follow: {width}x{height}

Both width and height are pixel value by default, but if you precise the unit (in "cm", "mm", "in" or "pt"). That unit will be used instead.

For instance, you can set a format of:

{
    "source": "https://www.example.com",
    "format": "21cmx29,7cm"
}

Now, if you want a "liquid" height, which will analyze the height of the page and use it as your format, you can set the {height} value to auto. So, instead of setting a fixed height such as format: '1280x1024', you can set format: '1280xauto' and the height will be calculated based on the content of the page.