D3.js version 5 chart to PDF

Question

I'm currently using d3.js version 5 and was wondering if there is an actual way for me to export my charts to PDF? For example in the screenshot provided below, there is a button for me to use or an option for me to export that specific chart to PDF

Answer 1

You can use PDFKIT library to achieve this, this snippet is inspired by the example they provided in the live demo, I just extended it by adding the D3.js example along javascript to retrieve the HTML text.

Update: I added custom implementation to allow custom file name for the downloaded PDF, basically I create <a> tag, append it to body, then assign download attribute to it, and the href attribute contains the blob object URL we created.

NOTE: this will not work in the snippet since its a sandbox, it should work fine in your local machine and production.

---

const svgToPdfExample = (svg) => {
  const doc = new window.PDFDocument();
  const chunks = [];
  const stream = doc.pipe({
    // writable stream implementation
    write: (chunk) => chunks.push(chunk),
    end: () => {
      const pdfBlob = new Blob(chunks, {
        type: "application/octet-stream",
      });
      var blobUrl = URL.createObjectURL(pdfBlob);
      //window.open(`${blobUrl}?customfilename.pdf`);
      
      /* custom file name download */
      const a = document.createElement("a");
      document.body.appendChild(a);
      a.style = "display: none";
      a.href = blobUrl;
      a.download = "test.pdf"; // <---- 👈 file name
      a.click();
      window.URL.revokeObjectURL(url);
    },
    // readable streaaam stub iplementation
    on: (event, action) => {},
    once: (...args) => {},
    emit: (...args) => {},
  });

  window.SVGtoPDF(doc, svg, 0, 0);

  doc.end();
};

document.getElementById("download").addEventListener("click", function () {
  const svgElement = document.getElementById("svg");
  svgToPdfExample(svgElement.innerHTML);
});

var margin = { top: 20, right: 20, bottom: 70, left: 40 },
  width = 900 - margin.left - margin.right,
  height = 300 - margin.top - margin.bottom;

// Parse the date / time
var parseDate = d3.time.format("%Y-%m").parse;

var x = d3.scale.ordinal().rangeRoundBands([0, width], 0.05);

var y = d3.scale.linear().range([height, 0]);

var xAxis = d3.svg
  .axis()
  .scale(x)
  .orient("bottom")
  .tickFormat(d3.time.format("%Y-%m"));

var yAxis = d3.svg.axis().scale(y).orient("left").ticks(10);

var svg = d3
  .select("body")
  .append("svg")
  .attr("id", "svg")
  .attr("width", width + margin.left + margin.right)
  .attr("height", height + margin.top + margin.bottom)
  .append("g")
  .attr("transform", "translate(" + margin.left + "," + margin.top + ")");

d3.csv(
  "https://gist.githubusercontent.com/d3noob/8952219/raw/5017886e4fe22af2a7e06e20cf381bcf09cdc6db/bar-data.csv",
  function (error, data) {
    data.forEach(function (d) {
      d.date = parseDate(d.date);
      d.value = +d.value;
    });

    x.domain(
      data.map(function (d) {
        return d.date;
      })
    );
    y.domain([
      0,
      d3.max(data, function (d) {
        return d.value;
      }),
    ]);

    svg
      .append("g")
      .attr("class", "x axis")
      .attr("transform", "translate(0," + height + ")")
      .call(xAxis)
      .selectAll("text")
      .style("text-anchor", "end")
      .attr("dx", "-.8em")
      .attr("dy", "-.55em")
      .attr("transform", "rotate(-90)");

    svg
      .append("g")
      .attr("class", "y axis")
      .call(yAxis)
      .append("text")
      .attr("transform", "rotate(-90)")
      .attr("y", 6)
      .attr("dy", ".71em")
      .style("text-anchor", "end")
      .text("Value ($)");

    svg
      .selectAll("bar")
      .data(data)
      .enter()
      .append("rect")
      .style("fill", "steelblue")
      .attr("x", function (d) {
        return x(d.date);
      })
      .attr("width", x.rangeBand())
      .attr("y", function (d) {
        return y(d.value);
      })
      .attr("height", function (d) {
        return height - y(d.value);
      });
  }
);

.axis {
  font: 10px sans-serif;
}

.axis path,
.axis line {
  fill: none;
  stroke: #000;
  shape-rendering: crispEdges;
}

<!DOCTYPE html>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<head>
</head>
<body>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/pdfkit@0.10.0/js/pdfkit.standalone.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/svg-to-pdfkit@0.1.8/source.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/d3/3.5.17/d3.min.js"></script>

<button id="download">Donwload SVG as PDF</button>
</body>