Generating PDF invoices using Lago

#1

Post by math_reads » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 4:02 PM UTC

Generating PDF invoices using Lago
getlago.com

Re: Generating PDF invoices using Lago

#2

Post by AnhTho_FR » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

Generating a custom PDF is just such a pain. You don't know it before you tried to do it.

I've seen Anvil (a YC co) is building a product dedicated to this challenge, check it out!

Re: Generating PDF invoices using Lago

#3

Post by wutwutwutwut » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

AnhTho_FR wrote: post #2

Generating a custom PDF is just such a pain. You don't know it before you tried to do it. I've seen Anvil (a YC co) is building a product dedicated to this challenge, check it out!

I wrote some C# code a couple of years ago to generate PDF invoices. Has been running fine since then generating tens of thousands of PDFs. It was pretty straight forward back then, only annoying thing were page breaks when there were a lot of line items, but apart from that I would not consider it a "pain".

What issue have you had? What do you mean by "custom"?

Re: Generating PDF invoices using Lago

#4

Post by ranger_danger » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 4:46 PM UTC

AnhTho_FR wrote: post #2

Generating a custom PDF is just such a pain. You don't know it before you tried to do it. I've seen Anvil (a YC co) is building a product dedicated to this challenge, check it out!

I just use headless chromium to "print" a generated HTML page as a PDF, works great.

Re: Generating PDF invoices using Lago

#5

Post by thibo_skabgia » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

No post body was provided.

Re: Generating PDF invoices using Lago

#6

Post by ranger_danger » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

Open source backend when?

Re: Generating PDF invoices using Lago

#7

Post by AnhTho_FR » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

wutwutwutwut wrote: post #3

AnhTho_FR wrote: post #2

Generating a custom PDF is just such a pain. You don't know it before you tried to do it. I've seen Anvil (a YC co) is building a product dedicated to this challenge, check it out!

I wrote some C# code a couple of years ago to generate PDF invoices. Has been running fine since then generating tens of thousands of PDFs. It was pretty straight forward back then, only annoying thing were page breaks when there were a lot of line items, but apart from that I would not consider it a "pain". What issue have you had? What do you mean by "custom"?

You're right, per se generating a small number of PDF is indeed easy.

What's complex is: - Dynamic PDFs: you're trying to digitize a government process for instance, by launching online forms with a variety of user paths for the answers and generating a PDF with the answers that still fits specific government requirements - Doing it at scale

Re: Generating PDF invoices using Lago

#8

Post by AnhTho_FR » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:01 PM UTC

ranger_danger wrote: post #6

Open source backend when?

What do you mean by "backend" ?

Re: Generating PDF invoices using Lago

#9

Post by AnhTho_FR » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:01 PM UTC

thibo_skabgia wrote: post #5

Quoted post unavailable.

No post body was provided.

Re: Generating PDF invoices using Lago

#10

Post by lloydatkinson » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:01 PM UTC

AnhTho_FR wrote: post #2

Generating a custom PDF is just such a pain. You don't know it before you tried to do it. I've seen Anvil (a YC co) is building a product dedicated to this challenge, check it out!

If you're OK with paying ~£0.05 per PDF you can just use Adobe's PDF API where you supply a word document with {{ name }} like variables in it and a JSON file and you get back a PDF with it all filled in. This way you just change the styling and layout with a word editor.