pdfy

Convert web articles to PDF using the Reader View Chrome extension and headless Chrome (Puppeteer).

Features

Extracts article content via Mozilla Readability
Renders using Reader View for clean typography
Supports all Reader View themes: light, dark, sepia, groove-dark, solarized-light, solarized-dark, nord-light, nord-dark
Custom CSS injection
Syntax highlighting via highlight.js
Automatic reading time estimation
Configurable extension preferences

Installation

npm install

The Reader View extension is downloaded and extracted automatically on first run.

Usage

node src/index.js --help

Usage: pdfy [options] <url>

Arguments:
  url                      URL of the article to convert

Options:
  -t, --theme <theme>      Reader View theme (light, dark, sepia, groove-dark, solarized-light, solarized-dark, nord-light, nord-dark)
  -c, --css <path>         path to custom CSS file
  --config <path>          path to config file (.pdfyrc, .pdfyrc.json, pdfy.config.js)
  -p, --prefs <path>       path to extension preferences JSON
  -o, --output <path>      output file path (default: ./output/<title>.pdf)
  -l, --log-level <level>  logging level (fatal, error, warn, info, debug)
  -h, --help               display help for command

Configuration

pdfy automatically discovers a config file in the current directory. Supported formats:

.pdfyrc (JSON)
.pdfyrc.json (JSON)
pdfy.config.js (ESM module exporting a default object)

Example .pdfyrc:

{
  "theme": "dark",
  "css": "config/rules.css",
  "prefs": "config/reader-view-preferences.json",
  "output": "./output/article.pdf"
}

Example pdfy.config.js:

export default {
  theme: 'dark',
  css: 'config/rules.css',
  prefs: 'config/reader-view-preferences.json',
  output: './output/article.pdf'
}

CLI flags always override config file values. Use --config <path> to specify a custom config file location.

Examples

node src/index.js https://example.com/article
node src/index.js https://example.com/article --theme dark --css config/rules.css
node src/index.js https://example.com/article --prefs config/reader-view-preferences.json
node src/index.js https://example.com/article --config .pdfyrc
npm start -- https://example.com/article --theme dark --css config/rules.css

Running tests

npm test

The test script reads URLs from src/test/test.txt and runs multiple scenarios (default, dark, sepia, custom CSS, etc.).

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