PDF Export Overview

Out of the box, the Kendo UI suite provides built-in PDF export and configuration options.

Under the hood, most of the PDF export options use the Drawing library.

The PDF Export is part of Kendo UI for jQuery, a professional grade UI library with 110+ components for building modern and feature-rich applications. To try it out sign up for a free 30-day trial.

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Component PDF Export Support

The following Kendo UI widgets support PDF export implementations:

• Grid (demo)
• TreeList (demo)
• PivotGrid (demo)
• Scheduler (demo)
• Gantt (demo)
• Spreadsheet (demo)
• Editor (demo)

The Charts and Diagram provide PDF export by using their implementation of the saveAsPDF() method.

• Diagram (demo)
• Chart (demo)

The Gauges and Barcodes can be exported to PDF by using the exportPDF() method together with the kendo.saveAs() method to save the file.

• ArcGauge (demo)
• CircularGauge (demo)
• LinearGauge (demo)
• RadialGauge (demo)
• BarCode (demo)
• QRCode (demo)

Functionality and Features

• Page Templates—When you request multi-page output, you can additionally specify a page template.
• PDF Options—The PDF Export provides options for specifying the basic parameters of the generated PDF file.
• Scaling—The PDF Export enables you to export a PDF document that is bigger or smaller than its original elements.
• Customizing the Appearance—You can change the appearance of the PDF by using CSS rules that apply only to the PDF output.
• Exporting Tabular Data—The PDF Export enables you to export a table with a large number of columns.
• Repeat Headers—You can repeat the headers of components such as the Grid on every page that is exported.
• Multi-Page Content—You can export content to multiple pages.
• Hyperlinks—The PDF Export enables you to configure the behavior of the hyperlinks.
• Embedded Fonts—You can embed fonts to export non-standard ASCII characters.
• Dimensions—You can configure the dimensions of the PDF file.

Compression

Starting with v2023.3.1115 the Pako library is no longer distributed with the rest of the Kendo UI for jQuery scripts. You must use one of the official distribution channels such as unpkg instead.

The PDF generator supports compression through the JavaScript Pako library. To automatically enable the compression, load Pako with a <script> tag (window.pako is available). Compression can make a big difference in the output file size when you are using custom TTF fonts or images with alpha channel, such as PNGs with transparency.

<script src="https://unpkg.com/pako/dist/pako_deflate.min.js"></script>

Besides drastically reducing the output size, Pako enables the browser to use less memory while rendering the PDF. Chrome often crashes on generating very large PDF files and including this library will mitigate the problem.

Supported Browsers

For more information on the provided browser support, see the Web Browser Support article. For more information on the Drawing library's API-specific limitations, check the Limitations and Browser Support for Kendo UI Drawing API

Next Steps

• Getting Started with the PDF Export
• PDF Options JavaScript API Reference
• Knowledge Base