You don't have to save it to the server (unless that is a business logic requirement). What you can do is simply this:
pdf.create(htmlbody).toStream(function(err, stream){ if (err) return next(err); res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/pdf'); res.setHeader('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename='+pdfName+';'); stream.pipe(res); });
Basically, all you need to do is set the appropriate headers and then pipe the stream you get from html-pdf to your res stream.
If you however need to save the PDF on the server first, then you'll have to write it to the file system and once it's done, read it back and send it over the response stream again.
Edit: Here's the code snippet with a full working example (running on Node v4.0.0).
var http = require('http'); var pdf = require('html-pdf'); const PORT = 8765; var server = http.createServer((req, res) => { var html = '<html><head><title>PDF Test</title></head><body><h1>Welcome</h1><p>This is a test to see if we can get <b>PDF generation</b> to work on the server side.</p><p>PDF files can be very tricky to do on the server so this will take a bit of <u>hit and trail</u> before we can be confident it works fine.</p></body></html>'; pdf.create(html).toStream((err, stream) => { if (err) { console.error(err); res.status(500); res.end(JSON.stringify(err)); return; } res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/pdf'); res.setHeader('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename=test-file.pdf;'); stream.pipe(res); }); }); server.listen(PORT, () => { console.log('Server listening on Port: %s', PORT); });
Save the above as something like pdf.js and run in with node (node pdf.js) and open http://localhost:8765/. This should trigger a download in your browser.
