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Puppeteer vs WeasyPrint: What are the differences?
Introduction
Here, we will provide a comparison of the key differences between Puppeteer and WeasyPrint, focusing on their specific features and capabilities.
1. Rendering Engine: Puppeteer is powered by Chrome's rendering engine, making it an ideal tool for automating interactions with websites and generating screenshots and PDFs. On the other hand, WeasyPrint is a pure Python library that utilizes the powerful rendering engine from the Gecko project, which is used by Firefox. It offers good support for various web standards and CSS.
2. Language and Environment: Puppeteer is written in JavaScript and runs on Node.js, which makes it suitable for developers familiar with JavaScript and the Node.js ecosystem. WeasyPrint, on the other hand, is written in Python and can be integrated with Python web frameworks. This makes it an excellent choice for Python developers and projects built in Python.
3. Supported File Formats: Puppeteer can generate screenshots and PDFs, making it compatible with image and PDF file formats. WeasyPrint, in addition to generating PDFs, also supports the generation of printable HTML/CSS pages and SVG files. This provides greater flexibility in generating various types of output files.
4. Browser Compatibility: Puppeteer allows automation of tasks using the latest version of the Chromium browser, ensuring compatibility with modern web technologies. However, WeasyPrint uses the Gecko rendering engine, which may not always offer the same level of compatibility with cutting-edge web features.
5. Headless and Headful Mode: Puppeteer supports both headless mode (running without a visible user interface) and headful mode (running with a visible browser window). This allows developers to choose between automating tasks in the background or visually observing the process. WeasyPrint, being mainly a Python library, does not have a dedicated headless mode and is primarily designed for producing offline outputs.
6. Community and Ecosystem: Puppeteer benefits from a large and active community due to its association with the Chromium project and the broader JavaScript ecosystem. It has extensive documentation, a wide range of online resources, and a thriving community of contributors. WeasyPrint, although less popular, has its own community of contributors and maintains a comprehensive documentation.
In summary, Puppeteer and WeasyPrint differ in terms of their rendering engines, programming languages and environments, supported file formats, browser compatibility, headless/headful modes, and community and ecosystem.
I am using Node 12 for server scripting and have a function to generate PDF and send it to a browser. Currently, we are using PhantomJS to generate a PDF. Some web post shows that we can achieve PDF generation using Puppeteer. I was a bit confused. Should we move to puppeteerJS? Which one is better with NodeJS for generating PDF?
You better go with puppeteer. It is basically chrome automation tool, written in nodejs. So what you get is PDF, generated by chrome itself. I guess there is hardly better PDF generation tool for the web. Phantomjs is already more or less outdated as technology. It uses some old webkit port that's quite behind in terms of standards and features. It can be replaced with puppeteer for every single task.
I suggest puppeteer to go for. It is simple and easy to set up. Only limitaiton is it can be used only for chrome browser and currently they are looking into expanding into FF. The next thing is Playwright which is just a scale up of Puppeteer. It supports cross browsers.
Pros of Puppeteer
- Very well documented10
- Scriptable web browser10
- Promise based6
Pros of WeasyPrint
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Cons of Puppeteer
- Chrome only10