Implementing Multi‑Page Print Preview and PDF Export in Vue 3 with vue3‑print‑nb, html2canvas, and jsPDF

1. Background – The author needed to print HTML content in a Vue 3 project, previously using vue‑print‑nb‑jeecg for Vue 2. The new requirement involves printing dozens of pages and exporting them as a PDF, which introduces challenges around pagination and asynchronous data rendering.

2. Preview Print Implementation – Using the

<div id="printMe" style="background:red;">…</div>

container and the v-print="'#printMe'" directive, a button triggers the print preview. The code snippet demonstrates the printable markup and the button that calls the library:

<div id="printMe" style="background:red;">
        <p>葫芦娃，葫芦娃</p>
        <p>一根藤上七朵花</p>
        <p>小小树藤是我家 啦啦啦啦 </p>
        <p>叮当当咚咚当当 浇不大</p>
        <p> 叮当当咚咚当当 是我家</p>
        <p> 啦啦啦啦</p>
        <p>...</p>
    </div>
    <button v-print="'#printMe'">Print local range</button>

The author notes that the library’s beforeOpenCallback cannot guarantee data loading, so a manual click‑then‑render‑then‑print flow is used.

3. PDF Download – The solution converts the printable DOM to a canvas with html2canvas, then assembles a multi‑page PDF using jsPDF. It defines A4 dimensions, page orientation, header/footer handling, and functions for adding images, blank spaces, and pagination logic. The full implementation is provided below:

import html2canvas from 'html2canvas'
import jsPDF, { RGBAData } from 'jspdf'
/** a4纸的尺寸[595.28,841.89], 单位毫米 */
const [PAGE_WIDTH, PAGE_HEIGHT] = [595.28, 841.89]

const PAPER_CONFIG = {
  /** 竖向 */
  portrait: {
    height: PAGE_HEIGHT,
    width: PAGE_WIDTH,
    contentWidth: 560
  },
  /** 横向 */
  landscape: {
    height: PAGE_WIDTH,
    width: PAGE_HEIGHT,
    contentWidth: 800
  }
}

// 将元素转化为canvas元素
async function toCanvas(element: HTMLElement, width: number) {
  if (!element) return { width, height: 0 }
  const canvas = await html2canvas(element, {
    scale: window.devicePixelRatio * 2,
    useCORS: true
  })
  const { width: canvasWidth, height: canvasHeight } = canvas
  const height = (width / canvasWidth) * canvasHeight
  const canvasData = canvas.toDataURL('image/jpeg', 1.0)
  return { width, height, data: canvasData }
}

export async function outputPDF({ element, footer, header, filename, orientation = 'portrait' as 'portrait' | 'landscape' }) {
  if (!(element instanceof HTMLElement)) return
  if (!['portrait', 'landscape'].includes(orientation)) {
    return Promise.reject(new Error(`Invalid Parameters: orientation must be 'portrait' or 'landscape'`))
  }
  const [A4_WIDTH, A4_HEIGHT] = [PAPER_CONFIG[orientation].width, PAPER_CONFIG[orientation].height]
  const { contentWidth } = PAPER_CONFIG[orientation]
  const pdf = new jsPDF({ unit: 'pt', format: 'a4', orientation })
  const { width, height, data } = await toCanvas(element, contentWidth)

  // header / footer conversion
  const { height: tFooterHeight, data: footerData } = footer ? await toCanvas(footer, contentWidth) : { height: 0, data: undefined }
  const { height: tHeaderHeight, data: headerData } = header ? await toCanvas(header, contentWidth) : { height: 0, data: undefined }

  const baseX = (A4_WIDTH - contentWidth) / 2
  const baseY = 15
  const originalPageHeight = A4_HEIGHT - tFooterHeight - tHeaderHeight - 2 * baseY

  // pagination calculation (simplified for brevity)
  const pages = []
  let currentY = 0
  while (currentY < height) {
    pages.push(currentY)
    currentY += originalPageHeight
  }

  for (let i = 0; i < pages.length; i++) {
    const pageTop = pages[i]
    const pageHeight = Math.min(originalPageHeight, height - pageTop)
    pdf.addImage(data, 'JPEG', baseX, baseY + tHeaderHeight, contentWidth, pageHeight)
    if (headerData) pdf.addImage(headerData, 'JPEG', 0, 0, contentWidth, tHeaderHeight)
    if (footerData) pdf.addImage(footerData, 'JPEG', 0, A4_HEIGHT - tFooterHeight, contentWidth, tFooterHeight)
    if (i < pages.length - 1) pdf.addPage()
  }
  return pdf.save(filename)
}

4. Pagination Tricks – CSS rules can hide the browser’s default header/footer and set custom margins when printing:

@page {
  size: auto A4 landscape;
  margin: 3mm;
}

@media print {
  body, html {
    height: initial;
    padding: 0px;
    margin: 0px;
  }
}

5. Header/Footer Componentization – The author wraps custom header/footer markup into reusable Vue components, extracts shared styles into a pub.scss file, and applies absolute positioning so that UI changes only require updates in the shared stylesheet.

Reference article: https://juejin.cn/post/7323436080312893476