PdfPecker.Cli 1.23.0

PdfPecker.Cli

The pdfpecker command-line tool: HTML and Markdown to PDF, and the everyday jobs on existing PDFs. It is a thin layer over the PdfPecker library, so it needs no browser, no JavaScript engine and no native binaries, and it never fetches anything over the network.

dotnet tool install -g PdfPecker.Cli
pdfpecker convert invoice.html            # writes invoice.pdf
pdfpecker watch invoice.html              # converts again on every save
pdfpecker merge a.pdf b.pdf:1-3 -o all.pdf

Run pdfpecker help for the commands and pdfpecker help <command> for the options of one.

Commands

- stands for standard input or output, so PDFs can be piped. Progress and errors go to standard error. The exit code is 0 on success, 1 when the work failed (a damaged file, a wrong password, an invalid signature) and 2 when the command line is wrong.

Replacing wkhtmltopdf

A call without a command word is read like wkhtmltopdf's, with its 10 mm default margins:

pdfpecker -s A4 -O Landscape -T 15mm --footer-center "Page [page] of [topage]" in.html out.pdf

The page size and orientation, margins, --title, --zoom, --disable-smart-shrinking, --user-style-sheet, --no-outline, --no-pdf-compression, --enable-local-file-access, -q and the --header-left/-center/-right and --footer-left/-center/-right texts (with [page], [topage], [date], [time] and [title]) work as they do there. Options that exist only because wkhtmltopdf runs a browser (--javascript-delay, --cookie, --header-html, --grayscale, ...) are accepted and ignored with a warning, so a script keeps running. Web addresses are refused: save the page to a file first.

Signing

export PDFPECKER_CERT_PASSWORD=...
pdfpecker sign contract.pdf signed.pdf --cert me.pfx --reason "I approve" --page 1 --rect 36,36,200,60
pdfpecker verify signed.pdf --trusted-root ca.cer

Passwords given on the command line are visible to other users of the machine; prefer the -env options and PDFPECKER_CERT_PASSWORD.

License

MIT. The tool is released with every PdfPecker release under the same version.