I have used chart.js to generate a report page that has multiple charts. I need to export this report to PDF. There are many solutions available via search, but I cannot find one which has multiple canvas elements.
The only available solution seems to be to loop through all the images, and recreate the report using the images, and then download that as a pdf.
Is there any simpler/more efficient way to accomplish this?
<body>
<h1> Chart 1 </h1>
<div style="width:800px; height:400px;">
<canvas id="chart_1" width="50" height="50"></canvas>
</div>
<h1> Chart 2 </h1>
<div style="width:800px; height:400px;">
<canvas id="chart_2" width="50" height="50"></canvas>
</div>
<h1> Chart 3 </h1>
<div style="width:800px; height:400px;">
<canvas id="chart_3" width="50" height="50"></canvas>
</div>
</body>
Honestly, it seems like the easiest approach would be to just provide a "download to PDF" link that pops up the browser's print page and instruct to user to select "print as pdf".
If that approach doesn't work for you (or your users), then here is a rough way to do it.
Basically, we create a new
canvas
element that is the size of your report page and incrementally paint the pixels from your existing chart.jscanvas
charts into the newcanvas
. Once that is done, then you can usejsPDF
to add the new canvas to a pdf document as an image and download the file.Here is an example implementation that does just that.
You can see it in action at this codepen.
Now let's talk about some gotchas with this approach. First, you have to control the position of each chart.js
canvas
in the newcanvas
object. The only way to do that is to have an understanding of how your report page is structured and implement that same structure. In my example, my charts are in a 2x2 grid and the logic handles this accordingly. If you had a 3x2 grid or something different then you would have to change the positioning logic.Lastly, the final pdf output file dimensions are much larger than the original chart page (from the web). I think the reason is because my chart "container" div stretches across the full page. Therefore, you probably want to use a different approach for setting the size of your new
canvas
.So long story short, the above example is meant to demonstrate an approach and not be your final solution.
Good luck!