pdfme/playground

This repository is a playground and development environment for the https://github.com/pdfme/pdfme library. It can be started with the following command.

root directory

$ npm install
$ npm run build

playground directory

$ npm install
$ npm run dev

If you are developing a pdfme library, please refer to the following document. https://github.com/pdfme/pdfme/blob/main/DEVELOPMENT.md

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How to Add Sample Templates

The playground/public/template-assets directory is the source of the sample template gallery used by the playground.

Each gallery item is a directory under playground/public/template-assets/<template-name>/.

Designer templates

Use this flow for normal pdfme templates:

1. Create a kebab-case directory in playground/public/template-assets.
   • Example: playground/public/template-assets/invoice-blue.
2. Put template.json in that directory.
   • You can create it with the playground Designer and download the Template JSON.
3. Add gallery metadata in playground/public/template-assets/<template-name>/metadata.json.

Example:

{
  "order": 200,
  "description": "A blue invoice variant for a more branded business document.",
  "tags": ["Invoice", "Business", "Table"]
}

Supported metadata fields:

• title: optional display title. If omitted, the directory name is converted from kebab-case.
• order: optional gallery sort order. Lower numbers appear first; leave gaps such as 10, 20, and 30 so new templates can be inserted later. Templates without order appear after ordered templates and are sorted by title/name.
• description: short card description shown in the template gallery.
• tags: filter tags shown on the card and in the gallery filter.
• sourceKind: optional generation kind. Use "designer", "jsx", or "md2pdf". Normal template.json samples can omit this; they default to "designer".

Template metadata is validated during asset generation. Every template directory with a template.json must have metadata, and metadata entries without a matching template directory fail the build.

JSX and md2pdf starters

JSX and md2pdf starters live in the same template-assets gallery. Their source is stored beside the generated template so the source, metadata, thumbnail, and generated template.json move together.

• JSX starters use playground/public/template-assets/<starter-name>/source.tsx.
• md2pdf starters use playground/public/template-assets/<starter-name>/source.md.
• Add metadata.json in the same directory with sourceKind: "jsx" or sourceKind: "md2pdf".
• Use names such as jsx-invoice or md2pdf-overview so the gallery type can also be inferred.
• Give generated starters a human-readable title; otherwise the gallery falls back to the directory name.
• Use order when a starter should appear in the first screen of the gallery.

Example:

{
  "title": "Invoice layout",
  "description": "A two-page invoice generated from JSX authoring source.",
  "sourceKind": "jsx",
  "tags": ["Invoice", "Business", "Table"]
}

Regenerate assets

After changing templates or metadata, run this from the playground directory:

npm run generate-template-assets

This command:

• generates JSX/md2pdf starter template.json files,
• regenerates index.json and manifest.json,
• creates or updates thumbnail.png for each template,
• keeps only the current versioned manifest under template-assets/manifests/.

npm run dev and npm run build also run this command automatically.

Before committing, include the updated template directory, metadata files, generated manifest.json, and versioned manifest. The generated index.json, thumbnail PNGs, and hash-map cache files are intentionally ignored.