I haven’t finished the merge yet, as mentioned above the save feature is to save the exported html and then reuse the html… this opens up a lot more than just saving a pdf. you can then edit a “pdf” on the fly, use it to create a web page, use it in the print pro preview tool or html element, you can even build a bubble app to make and alter pdf’s… now there is a money maker… FYI, the merge will be a tool that remove the outer html from following pages and adds them to the first page.
fantastic! sounds like the new save MAY enable my use case even without official merge…if HTML reports/invoices can become Bubble “things”, then one could do a search…return a list of those “things” sorted (invoice 1, invoice 2, etc) then use the current mechanism to print as elements and let the user choose Save as PDF from the system print dialog.
Will play and report back
the way to go there would be to save invoices as a bubble thing with the field say invoice (text - the invoice html) and invoice name (text - a human friendly reference to this invoice) then as you say dosearchfor. this opens the possibility to use a search input to search the html for items, dates or any info in the invoice using the caption as the friendly name…
not seeing a Save action…just same Print Template (Advanced) action, which launches the OS print dialog. Am I missing something? Or does it require code to take the generated HTML and save to DB (eg as text in an invoice field of my Bubble thing)? I can copy the HTML into a standard Bubble HTML element, but that can’t be saved to db, or at least I haven’t figured it out (been trying that path for days prior to this release).
this is why rushing is not good @djwideman ! 
please see the update in about 5mins, you will see the save feature at the bottom of both the easy and advanced html templates.
Great plugin @jarrad. Any plans on adding a workflow action to send data to another Bubble page and print it? (similar to Select PDF’s “Generate PDF from a webpage” action rather than messing with datatables in the html template:
So I’ve managed to get everything working with the original v1 of the PrintPro plugin. If anyone is trying to achieve the following use cases reply or DM and I’m happy to share the “how”.
I’ll use “invoices” as an example, but the solution I’ve implemented will work with templates of any flavor–I’m doing clinical reports, not invoices.
- Generate a personalized PDF-ready invoice with a variable (read: unknown) number of line items.
- “Preview” the invoice as it will appear in PDF form right on the Bubble page.
- Save the individual PDF-ready invoice as a Bubble “Thing”.
- Select a set of invoices–by user, date range, etc.–and generate an aggregated PDF-ready report with nice page breaks between the individual invoices in the printed version.
- Save the aggregated PDF-ready report as a different Bubble “Thing”.
- Enable users to adjust the styling of the invoice template to suit their company branding.
The only catch with all of the above is that in v1 of PrintPro, the end state is dynamically rendered HTML that can trigger a launch of the user’s desktop system print dialog where they can preview and then “Save as PDF” to their local drive. No way yet to actually store the invoices as actual PDFs in Bubble, though HTML-2-PDF conversion APIs are widespread so with API Connector this is supremely doable.
Many, many thanks and huzzahs due to @jarrad for opening these doors and planting the seeds for a huge amount of innovative apps with this plugin and his counsel on the possibilities!!
Thats good to hear, the new version allows for the template to be created without prompting the user if that adds any value for you and also i still cant wrap my head why storing as html isnt a better option though… it means there is always a dynamic way to alter, reference, search or compile these “things” and then print.
This would be of tremendous help converting from SelectPDF to this tool. Yours seem to have way more options while creating multi page pdf’s in selectpdf remains a nightmare.
However, since all my print templates have been setup as pages at the moment to suit SelectPDF, it would be nice if this would be an option in your plugin @jarrad. Would then gladly buy your plugin!
@jarrad will attempt to help you wrap your head around save-as-pdf use case, as requested 
Saving as HTML is incredibly helpful, no question. However, there are tons of use cases around content distribution that require accessing a saved PDF.
If your app needs to send invoices, it’s great to be able to embed the invoice HTML in an email. However, in business scenarios, invoices need to be forwarded to Accounting dept. for processing, reimbursement, archiving for audits, etc. They need an actual file attachment they can download and reuse.
Same with my use case. I need to send a set of clinical reports to my user in downloadable (read: PDF) format. They need to store these as files, upload as attachments into billing systems, share file with patients, etc.
Hopefully this helps clarify…meantime, I continue to get great value out of the plugin as-is. PDF save would just be the cherry on top!
I get that a PDF is ultimately what would be sent in the case of an email, internal comms and so on. Im trying to leave the output of the Print Pro broad though to give a Save & Convert plugin maximum options of convertion to various docs but also to make the output of Print Pro be usable and parse-able by anything at that first level. Including,
Ali’s Little Gem:
Trust me you guys are going to want to grab this.
At the end of the day though one way or another i will have the option just where the action gets to live might change. After all this is print pro not save pro 
lol. Dont worry though we will get there. The select PDF feature is nearly done this is more likely going to be what you would switch to. I decided to put this feature at the top of print pros list because it covers a few current needs and then makes the plugin appeal to the couple of thousand select pdf users potentially getting them to migrate over meaning more funding for more development and 2000 less apps making unnecessary external api calls loading up bubble servers with traffic.
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Hurrah! Yes, I don’t know too many satisfied users of the current SelectPDF plugin. Lack of support in existing SelectPDF for raw HTML is a major drawback (on top of $$$, load time/reliability, and Bubble platform load, as you mentioned).
I’m assuming your upcoming new plugin/new version will not be limited to “PDF this page,” but will support inputting raw HTML and returning a PDF? Even if that is done via a “PDF an Element” where I can pass in a saved HTML element, complete with <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="my_custom_stylesheet.css"/> in the Head?
I’m sure MANY people would pay $20 for that plugin, once per app, instead of signing up for forking over $20/mo to feed the SelectPDF vendor’s coffers!
Yer so the way i have got it flowing currenty is you assign an action to a button or whatever, then you place the special Part B element on your dynamic “pdf” page’s on page load.
When the button is pressed it loads the page in a hidden frame and the special element causes the frames page to run the action because of the on page load. if you think about it there are alot things you could do with this concept that have nothing to even do with printing. Like imagine rather than a button, a do every x seconds and Part B on both pages but this time Part B is taking a portion of data from the frame and streaming it as a custom state. Then you could without using the db create live user/user browser comms.
Mine is a single page app. So, I’ve got an RG of Report Things (with a text type field “HTML-String” = HTML content for report), with a “Save PDF” button in the cell. I’d want the user to click PDF button, then run action to pass raw HTML to plugin for PDF processing, retrieve the PDF output, and store the binary PDF in another Report field (eg “PDF” = type : file).
Will this be doable? Or do you require a separate dedicated page for attaching the Part B PDF creation element?
I will just add a skip part b checkbox, then add html to insert into frame when part b skipping on true.
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Can’t wait! Also, don’t sell yourself short on this. This is a key feature for a lot of ERP-orientated apps and as mentioned, a lot of people pay $20 a month for a sub par service.
I’m also eagerly awaiting the CSS tools pro as I have some ideas to implement a new feature with it in our app that I want to add before we go live for the public.
Great stuff!
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Nice work @jarrad
Is it possible to download the page as a PDF instead of having the print feature? and some way to store the PDF inside Bubble?
Thanks a lot.
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@ryanck see the rest of the thread for context on this request. Data can currently be stored as HTML, coming soon you’ll be able to use some combination of PrintPro and/or related plugins to translate HTML + CSS into PDF.
At this point, I’m thinking it should be called PDF Pro. lol