Command-line interface

Hint

At any time, run xhtml2pdf --help to get help.

Basic usage

To generate a PDF document from an HTML file called source.html call:

xhtml2pdf source.html # will create source.pdf

Source

source: The source HTML file, or -, if you want to read it from stdin. Can also be a URL to a webpage.

some-script-that-outputs-html | xhtml2pdf - output.pdf

When using a URL, don’t forget to quote it, when needed:

xhtml2pdf "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=PDF&oldid=1183757701" output.pdf

Destination

[destination]: The destination PDF document. If omitted, it will be derived from the source. Use - to redirect the PDF file to stdout. Can also be a URL to a webpage.

Important

Make sure that the destination file is not already opened by another application (like Acrobat Reader)

Options

Input

--base <path>, -b <path>: Specify a base path. You should set this when the source HTML is supplied via stdin, as there is no other way to resolve relative hyperlinks.

--encoding <encoding>: The character encoding of the source HTML file. If left empty, this will be inferred from the HTML <meta charset> value.

--html: Parse the source document as HTML (default).

--xml, --xhtml, -x: Parse the source document as XHTML. This is set automatically if the source file name ends with “.xml”

HTTP Options

These are used when the source is a webpage.

--http_nosslcheck: Do not check the website’s SSL certificate.

--http_timeout: equivalent to timeout in http.client.HTTPSConnection

--http_source_address: equivalent to source_address in http.client.HTTPSConnection

--http_key_file

Deprecated:: Removed in Python 3.12 and not used anymore.

--http_cert_file

Deprecated:: Removed in Python 3.12 and not used anymore.

Styling

--css <file>, -c <file>: Path to default CSS file. It will be applied to the generated document. If omitted, a reasonable default will be used.

--css-dump: Output default CSS file.

When generating the HTML output, xhtml2pdf uses an internal default CSS definition (otherwise all tags would look the same). To get an impression of what it looks like, run:

xhtml2pdf --css-dump > xhtml2pdf-default.css

Output

--start-viewer, -s: Start the default PDF viewer after conversion.

--quiet, -q: Show no messages.

--warn, -w: Show warnings.

--debug, -d: Show debugging information.