Generating PDFs with React-PDF

CRITICAL REQUIREMENTS

Fonts MUST be local files - Remote font URLs (http/https) do NOT work. Always download fonts to local files before using them.
Wrap async code in IIFE - Top-level await causes errors. Always use
```
(async () => { ... })()
```
pattern.
Disable hyphenation for custom fonts - Custom fonts lack hyphenation dictionaries and may crash or break words incorrectly. Always call
```
Font.registerHyphenationCallback((word) => [word]);
```
after registering custom fonts.

Files

```
references/google-fonts.txt
```
- Metadata for ~65 popular Google Fonts with TrueType URLs. Each line is a font variant in tab-separated format:
```
font name
```
,
```
style
```
,
```
category
```
,
```
weight
```
,
```
url
```
.
```
references/components.md
```
- Full component API reference and supported CSS properties
```
assets/example-template.tsx
```
- Minimal working example demonstrating fixed footers, page numbers, and unbreakable content. Read this before starting to understand the basic patterns. Note: not all APIs are shown here — always refer to the docs and
```
references/components.md
```
for the full API.

Prerequisites

bash

npm install react @react-pdf/renderer
npm install -D tsx @types/react

tsx

runs TypeScript + JSX files directly via Node with no config — no

tsconfig.json

needed. It uses esbuild under the hood and handles JSX transformation automatically.

Core Components

Document: Root component (metadata, settings)
Page: Individual pages (A4, Letter, or custom dimensions)
View: Container component (similar to div)
Text: Text content, supports nesting for inline styling
Image: Embed images (JPG, PNG, base64)
Link: Clickable hyperlinks (external or internal)
Note: Annotation notes
Canvas: Freeform drawing with pdfkit methods
Svg: Vector graphics (Circle, Rect, Path, Line, Polygon, etc.)
StyleSheet: Create reusable styles

For full component props and CSS properties, see references/components.md.

Basic Example

tsx

import React from "react";
import { Document, Page, Text, View, StyleSheet, renderToFile } from "@react-pdf/renderer";

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  page: { flexDirection: "column", backgroundColor: "#ffffff", padding: 40 },
  title: { fontSize: 24, marginBottom: 20, fontWeight: "bold" },
  text: { fontSize: 12, lineHeight: 1.5 },
});

const MyDocument = () => (
  <Document>
    <Page size="A4" style={styles.page}>
      <View style={{ margin: 10, padding: 20 }}>
        <Text style={styles.title}>Document Title</Text>
        <Text style={styles.text}>Your content here</Text>
      </View>
    </Page>
  </Document>
);

(async () => {
  await renderToFile(<MyDocument />, "./output.pdf");
  console.log("PDF saved!");
})();

Running Scripts

PDF generation scripts use JSX, which Node cannot run directly. Use

tsx

to execute them:

bash

npx tsx my-document.tsx

npx tsx

works without installing tsx globally — it downloads on demand. If tsx is installed as a dev dependency (

npm install -D tsx

), it runs instantly without the npx download step.

Always wrap rendering in async IIFE:

tsx

// Good
(async () => {
  await renderToFile(<MyDocument />, "./output.pdf");
})();

// Bad - top-level await may fail
await renderToFile(<MyDocument />, "./output.pdf");

Previewing PDFs

To visually inspect generated PDFs, convert pages to images. Try

pdftoppm

first (often pre-installed), fall back to Python's PyMuPDF if unavailable.

Option 1: pdftoppm (poppler-utils) — preferred, no install needed in many environments:

bash

pdftoppm -png -r 200 document.pdf preview
# → preview-1.png, preview-2.png, ...

Option 2: PyMuPDF (Python) — fallback if pdftoppm is not available:

bash

pip install pymupdf

python

import fitz

doc = fitz.open("document.pdf")
for i, page in enumerate(doc):
    pix = page.get_pixmap(dpi=200)
    pix.save(f"page-{i+1}.png")

Rendering Methods

tsx

import { renderToFile, renderToBuffer } from "@react-pdf/renderer";

// To file
(async () => {
  await renderToFile(<MyDocument />, "./document.pdf");
})();

// To buffer
(async () => {
  const buffer = await renderToBuffer(<MyDocument />);
})();

Styling

Three methods:

StyleSheet.create()

, inline objects, or mixed arrays.

tsx

const styles = StyleSheet.create({ container: { padding: 20 } });

<View style={styles.container} />
<View style={{ padding: 20 }} />
<View style={[styles.container, { marginTop: 10 }]} />

Supported Units

pt

(default, 72 DPI),

in

mm

cm

vw

vh

Common Style Properties

tsx

{
  // Flexbox
  flexDirection: "row", justifyContent: "space-between", alignItems: "center",
  flexWrap: "wrap", gap: 10,

  // Box model
  margin: 10, padding: 20, width: "100%", height: 200,

  // Borders
  borderWidth: 1, borderColor: "#333", borderRadius: 5, borderStyle: "solid",

  // Colors
  backgroundColor: "#f0f0f0", color: "#000", opacity: 0.8,

  // Typography
  fontSize: 12, fontWeight: "bold", fontFamily: "Helvetica", fontStyle: "italic",
  lineHeight: 1.5, textAlign: "center", textDecoration: "underline",
  textTransform: "uppercase", letterSpacing: 1,

  // Position
  position: "absolute", top: 0, left: 0, right: 0, bottom: 0, zIndex: 10,

  // Transforms
  transform: "rotate(45deg)", transformOrigin: "center",
}

Images

Local files are most reliable. Remote URLs may fail due to network/CORS issues.

tsx

import { Image } from '@react-pdf/renderer';

<Image src="./images/photo.jpg" style={{ width: 200, height: 150 }} />
<Image src={{ data: buffer, format: 'png' }} />

SVG files cannot be used as Image sources. Read the SVG source and recreate using react-pdf Svg components.

SVG Graphics

tsx

import { Svg, Circle, Rect, Path, Line, G, Defs, LinearGradient, Stop } from "@react-pdf/renderer";

<Svg width="200" height="200" viewBox="0 0 200 200">
  <Defs>
    <LinearGradient id="grad1" x1="0%" y1="0%" x2="100%" y2="0%">
      <Stop offset="0%" stopColor="#3498db" />
      <Stop offset="100%" stopColor="#9b59b6" />
    </LinearGradient>
  </Defs>
  <Circle cx="100" cy="100" r="50" fill="url(#grad1)" />
  <Rect x="10" y="10" width="50" height="50" fill="#e74c3c" />
  <Path d="M10,50 Q50,10 90,50" stroke="#2ecc71" strokeWidth="2" fill="none" />
</Svg>;

Using Icons

Read SVG source from icon libraries and convert to react-pdf Svg components:

bash

npm install lucide-static

tsx

import { Svg, Path, Rect } from "@react-pdf/renderer";

// Converted from lucide-static/icons/mail.svg
const MailIcon = ({ size = 12, color = "#888" }) => (
  <Svg width={size} height={size} viewBox="0 0 24 24">
    <Path d="m22 7-8.991 5.727a2 2 0 0 1-2.009 0L2 7" stroke={color} strokeWidth={2} fill="none" />
    <Rect x="2" y="4" width="20" height="16" rx="2" stroke={color} strokeWidth={2} fill="none" />
  </Svg>
);

Links and Navigation

tsx

<Link src="https://example.com"><Text>Visit website</Text></Link>

<View id="section-1"><Text>Target</Text></View>
<Link src="#section-1"><Text>Jump to Section 1</Text></Link>

Dynamic Content and Page Numbers

tsx

<Text render={({ pageNumber, totalPages }) => `Page ${pageNumber} of ${totalPages}`} />

Fixed Headers/Footers

tsx

<Page size="A4">
  <View fixed style={{ position: "absolute", top: 20, left: 30, right: 30 }}>
    <Text>Header</Text>
  </View>
  <View style={{ marginTop: 60, marginBottom: 60 }}>
    <Text>Content</Text>
  </View>
  <Text
    fixed
    style={{ position: "absolute", bottom: 20, left: 30, right: 30, textAlign: "center" }}
    render={({ pageNumber, totalPages }) => `Page ${pageNumber} of ${totalPages}`}
  />
</Page>

Page Breaks and Wrapping

tsx

<View break />                              // Force page break
<View wrap={false}><Text>Keep together</Text></View>  // Prevent breaking inside
<Text orphans={2} widows={2}>Long text...</Text>       // Orphan/widow control
<View minPresenceAhead={100}><Text>Content</Text></View>  // Min space before break

Custom Fonts

CRITICAL: All font sources MUST be local file paths. Remote URLs do not work.

tsx

import { Font } from "@react-pdf/renderer";

Font.register({
  family: "Roboto",
  fonts: [
    { src: "./fonts/Roboto-Regular.ttf", fontWeight: "normal" },
    { src: "./fonts/Roboto-Bold.ttf", fontWeight: "bold" },
    { src: "./fonts/Roboto-Italic.ttf", fontStyle: "italic" },
  ],
});

// Always disable hyphenation when using custom fonts
Font.registerHyphenationCallback((word) => [word]);

Built-in fonts: Courier, Helvetica, Times-Roman (each with Bold, Italic/Oblique variants)

Font weight values: thin (100), ultralight (200), light (300), normal (400), medium (500), semibold (600), bold (700), ultrabold (800), heavy (900)

Google Fonts

Use

references/google-fonts.txt

to find font URLs, then download locally:

bash

# Find the font URL
grep "^Roboto" skills/react-pdf/references/google-fonts.txt | grep "700" | grep "normal"

# Download
mkdir -p fonts
curl -sL "<url-from-grep>" -o fonts/Roboto-Bold.ttf

# Verify - must show "TrueType Font data"
file fonts/Roboto-Bold.ttf

file

shows "HTML document" or "ASCII text", the download failed. Try a different URL or search GitHub for the font's official repo with TTF files.

Emoji

Emoji won't render in PDFs unless you register an emoji source. Install

twemoji-emojis

to get local Twemoji PNG assets — no internet needed at render time.

bash

npm install twemoji-emojis

tsx

import { Font } from "@react-pdf/renderer";

Font.registerEmojiSource({
  format: "png",
  url: "node_modules/twemoji-emojis/vendor/72x72/",
});

Then use emoji directly in Text:

<Text>Hello 🚀🎉</Text>

Other Features

tsx

// Canvas drawing
<Canvas style={{ width: 200, height: 200 }}
  paint={(painter, w, h) => { painter.circle(w/2, h/2, 50).fill("#3498db"); }} />

// Annotation notes
<Note style={{ color: "yellow" }}>Annotation text</Note>

// Hyphenation
Font.registerHyphenationCallback((word) => [word]); // disable

// Debug mode - visualize boundaries
<View debug><Text debug>Debug text</Text></View>

// Document metadata
<Document title="My Doc" author="Author" subject="Report" language="en-US" pdfVersion="1.5" />

Best Practices

Use
```
StyleSheet.create()
```
— define styles once and reuse
Compress images before embedding, use
```
cache={true}
```
for remote images
Test page breaks — content may flow differently than expected
Prefer flexbox over absolute positioning
Use
```
fixed
```
prop for headers/footers on every page
Use
```
debug={true}
```
to visualize element boundaries
Wrap rendering in try-catch blocks

Common Issues

Text overflow:

<Text style={{ width: 200, maxLines: 3, textOverflow: "ellipsis" }}>...</Text>

Missing fonts: Download locally and register with local file paths. Remote URLs will NOT work.

Unexpected page breaks: Use

wrap={false}

to keep content together, or

<View break />

to force breaks.

react-pdf

NPX Install

SKILL.md Content

Generating PDFs with React-PDF

CRITICAL REQUIREMENTS

Files

Prerequisites

Core Components

Basic Example

Running Scripts

Previewing PDFs

Rendering Methods

Styling

Supported Units

Common Style Properties

Images

SVG Graphics

Using Icons

Links and Navigation

Dynamic Content and Page Numbers

Fixed Headers/Footers

Page Breaks and Wrapping

Custom Fonts

Google Fonts

Emoji

Other Features

Best Practices

Common Issues