PDF export whole page or my user defined components on client side

[Oliver]

Hi support team,

I'm using your Vue UI and came upon a PDF export question. I know that certain of your components have the ability to export its content to PDF. But I would like to export the whole page or areas of my user defined components to PDF on the client side.

I found https://www.npmjs.com/package/@progress/kendo-vue-pdf in the web, but the "API Reference of the Kendo UI for Vue PDF Processing" leads nowhere. 

Would you mind to guide me, how to approach my intention? Or would you recommend to change to server side? As my project needs strong control over format (page break, landscape options, etc), so that the result matches the expectation of the given design of the (vue-)print preview.

Best regards
Oliver

[Petar]

Hi Oliver,

We are currently working on the documentation section of the PDF processing provided by the kendo-vue-pdf package and I can confirm that currently there is no documentation I can send you. I believe that very soon this missing part of the documentation will be online. 

What I can currently provide is this StackBlitz example that demonstrates how we can export the whole HTML page. You can see that there is the following code in the linked example. What it does is to export the content of the element which reference is "exportdiv". Also, the format of the exported file is A4.

exportPDFWithComp: function() {
  savePDF(this.$refs.exportdiv, { paperSize: "A4" });
  this.$refs.gridPdfExport.save(this.items);
}

You can also check this Kendo React UI API page. The API described in the previous link is the same in Kendo UI for Vue. 

If you have questions about the provided example, I will be happy to clarify them.

Regards,
Petar
Progress Telerik

[Oliver]

Hi Petar,

 

thank you very much. Pointing me to the React version of the API exactly feeds my needs :-)

 

With your information I'm concidering two options:

1) Keep PDF creation on the client side with kendo-vue-pdf

2) Switching to Telerik reporting on server side

How reliable is the client side PDF creation concerning browser versions and exact design copy? I suppose, that under the hood you insert screenshots of the components into the PDF?

 

I'm looking for the most stable option. Server side would promise not crashing on unexpected browser updates. Do you have any hints I should consider making my choice between both Telerik options?

 

Best regards

Oliver

[Petar]

Hi Oliver,

Talking in the context of the final result, I cannot say that one of the two approaches is better than the other. Both approaches should result in the same output. 

I can agree with you that there could be browser-related issues when a newer browser version is released. Another thing you can think about is that the client-side export will not work in the older versions of Internet Explorer and Safari. If you think that your clients will use such older browsers, then you should use the server-side exporting. 

Regards,
Petar
Progress Telerik

[Oliver]

Hi Petar,

 

thank you very much. That was a good adivice concerning the browsers. After discussing it with my client we will head to the server side approach, because reliability is key. And we concidered scheduled report automation important as well. So everything points to the server side solution.

 

Thanks again for your valuable support

Oliver

[Plamen]

Hi,

If you need further assistance please let us know

Regards,
Plamen
Progress Telerik