forme-pdf

A page-native PDF rendering engine written in Rust. Layout happens into pages, not onto an infinite canvas that gets sliced afterward — so page breaks, table headers, and flex layout all work correctly across pages.

cargo add forme-pdf installs the crate. The library name is forme:

use forme::{render_json, Document, FormeError};

Features

Page-native layout — flexbox, tables, and text reflow with real page boundary awareness
CSS-like styling — flexbox (row/column, wrap, grow/shrink), CSS Grid, absolute positioning
Text — OpenType shaping, Knuth-Plass line breaking, hyphenation (35+ languages), BiDi, per-character font fallback
Tables — automatic header repetition on page breaks, column spans
Images — JPEG, PNG, WebP (embedded or data URI)
SVG — inline SVG rendering (rect, circle, line, path, arc)
Charts — BarChart, LineChart, PieChart, AreaChart, DotPlot (engine-native, no JS)
QR codes & barcodes — vector rendering (Code128, Code39, EAN13, EAN8, Codabar)
Canvas — arbitrary vector drawing via a Canvas-like API
Watermarks — rotated text behind page content
AcroForms — fillable PDF forms (TextField, Checkbox, Dropdown, RadioButton) with form flattening
PDF/UA-1 — accessibility compliance with structure tree, tab order, role map, artifact tagging
PDF/A — archival compliance (PDF/A-2b, PDF/A-2a) with full font embedding and XMP metadata
Digital signatures — PKCS#7 detached signatures with X.509 certificates
Templates — expression language for dynamic documents ($ref, $each, $if)
WASM — compiles to WebAssembly for browser and serverless use

Quick start

use forme::{render_json, FormeError};

fn main() -> Result<(), FormeError> {
    let json = r#"{
        "pages": [{ "size": "A4" }],
        "children": [{
            "kind": "text",
            "content": "Hello from Forme!",
            "style": { "fontSize": 24, "margin": { "top": 72, "left": 72 } }
        }]
    }"#;

    let pdf_bytes = render_json(json)?;
    std::fs::write("hello.pdf", pdf_bytes).unwrap();
    Ok(())
}

API

Rendering

Function	Description
`render(&Document)`	Render a document struct to PDF bytes
`render_json(&str)`	Parse JSON and render to PDF bytes
`render_with_layout(&Document)`	Render and return PDF bytes + layout metadata
`render_json_with_layout(&str)`	Parse JSON, render, and return PDF bytes + layout metadata
`render_template(&str, &str)`	Evaluate a template with data, then render
`render_template_with_layout(&str, &str)`	Evaluate a template with data, render, and return PDF bytes + layout metadata

PDF Operations

Function	Description
`merge_pdfs(&[&[u8]])`	Combine multiple PDFs into one
`certify_pdf(&[u8], &str, &str, ...)`	Apply a PKCS#7 digital signature to an existing PDF
`redact_pdf(&[u8], &[RedactionRegion])`	Redact regions from a PDF (removes underlying text)
`redact_text(&[u8], &[TextSearchRedaction])`	Find text by pattern and redact matching regions
`find_text_regions(&[u8], &[TextSearchPattern])`	Find text regions in a PDF without redacting

All functions return Result<Vec<u8>, FormeError> (or a tuple with LayoutInfo for the _with_layout variants).

Documentation

Full docs — component reference, styling guide, examples
API reference — Rust API docs
GitHub — source, issues, JSX/TypeScript packages

License

MIT

forme-pdf 0.9.1