ironpress 0.3.0

Pure Rust HTML/CSS/Markdown to PDF converter. No browser, no system dependencies.
Documentation
ironpress-0.3.0 has been yanked.

ironpress

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Pure Rust HTML/CSS/Markdown to PDF converter. No browser, no system dependencies.

Other Rust PDF crates shell out to headless Chrome or wkhtmltopdf. ironpress does it natively with a built-in layout engine. No C libraries, no binaries to install, just cargo add ironpress.

Quick Start

use ironpress::html_to_pdf;

let pdf_bytes = html_to_pdf("<h1>Hello</h1><p>World</p>").unwrap();
std::fs::write("output.pdf", pdf_bytes).unwrap();

With Options

use ironpress::{HtmlConverter, PageSize, Margin};

let pdf = HtmlConverter::new()
    .page_size(PageSize::LETTER)
    .margin(Margin::uniform(54.0))
    .convert("<h1>Custom page</h1>")
    .unwrap();

Markdown to PDF

let pdf = ironpress::markdown_to_pdf("# Hello\n\n**Bold** and *italic* text.").unwrap();

ironpress::convert_markdown_file("README.md", "readme.pdf").unwrap();

Built-in Markdown parser with zero external dependencies. Supports headings, bold, italic, inline code, fenced code blocks, links, images, ordered and unordered lists, blockquotes, and horizontal rules.

File Conversion

ironpress::convert_file("input.html", "output.pdf").unwrap();

Supported HTML Elements

Category Elements
Headings <h1> through <h6> with default sizes and bold
Block containers <p>, <div>, <blockquote>, <pre>, <figure>, <figcaption>, <address>
Semantic sections <section>, <article>, <nav>, <header>, <footer>, <main>, <aside>, <details>, <summary>
Inline formatting <strong>, <b>, <em>, <i>, <u>, <small>, <sub>, <sup>, <code>, <abbr>, <span>
Text decoration <del>, <s> (strikethrough), <ins> (underline), <mark> (highlight)
Links <a> with colored underlined text
Line breaks <br>, <hr>
Lists <ul>, <ol> with bullets and numbers, <li>, <dl>, <dt>, <dd>
Tables <table>, <thead>, <tbody>, <tfoot>, <tr>, <td>, <th>, <caption> with multi-column layout and cell borders

CSS Support

Inline styles (style="...")

font-size, font-weight, font-style, color, background-color, margin, padding, text-align, text-decoration, line-height, page-break-before, page-break-after

<style> blocks

<style>
  p { color: navy; font-size: 14pt }
  .highlight { background-color: yellow }
  #title { font-size: 24pt }
  h1, h2 { color: darkblue }
</style>

Supported selectors: tag names (p, h1), classes (.foo), IDs (#bar), combined (p.foo), comma-separated (h1, h2).

Colors: named colors, #hex, rgb(). Units: px, pt, em.

Security

HTML is sanitized by default before conversion:

  • <script>, <iframe>, <object>, <embed>, <form> tags are stripped
  • <style> tags are preserved but dangerous CSS (@import, external url(), expression()) is removed
  • Event handlers (onclick, onload, etc.) are removed
  • javascript: URLs are neutralized
  • Input size and nesting depth are limited

Sanitization can be disabled with .sanitize(false) if you trust the input.

How It Works

Input -> Sanitize -> Parse (html5ever) -> Extract <style> -> Style cascade -> Layout engine -> PDF
  1. Sanitize the input HTML to remove dangerous elements
  2. Parse HTML into a DOM tree using html5ever, extracting <style> blocks
  3. Resolve styles by cascading tag defaults, then stylesheet rules, then inline CSS
  4. Layout elements with text wrapping, page breaks, tables, lists, and box model
  5. Render to PDF using built-in Helvetica fonts (no font embedding needed)

For Markdown input, an additional step converts Markdown to HTML first using the built-in parser.

License

MIT