Command line

New in 1.23.0.

PdfPecker.Cli is the pdfpecker dotnet tool: HTML and Markdown to PDF, and the everyday jobs on existing PDFs, from a terminal, a script or a build pipeline. It is a thin layer over the library, so it needs no browser, no JavaScript engine and no native binaries, and it never fetches anything over the network.

dotnet tool install -g PdfPecker.Cli
pdfpecker convert invoice.html            # writes invoice.pdf
pdfpecker watch invoice.html              # converts again on every save
pdfpecker merge a.pdf b.pdf:1-3 -o all.pdf

pdfpecker help lists the commands and pdfpecker help <command> gives the options of one. The tool is released with every PdfPecker release under the same version, and carries the library inside it, so it has no dependencies.

Commands

Command	What it does
`convert`	HTML or Markdown file (or `-` for standard input) to PDF
`watch`	`convert`, again each time the file, its folder or the style sheet changes
`merge`, `split`, `extract`, `remove`, `rotate`	Join, cut, keep, drop and turn pages
`stamp`	Lay a PDF or an HTML page over or under every page
`compact`, `linearize`, `sanitize`	Smaller files, Fast Web View, no scripts or launch actions
`sign`, `verify`, `encrypt`, `decrypt`	PAdES signatures, AES-256 passwords
`to-image`, `to-html`, `text`, `info`	PNG, JPEG, WebP or TIFF, one HTML file, plain text, a summary

- stands for standard input or output, so PDFs can be piped from one command to the next. Progress and errors go to standard error. The exit code is 0 on success, 1 when the work failed (a damaged file, a wrong password, an invalid signature) and 2 when the command line is wrong. A command that takes several inputs needs an output ending in .pdf, so a mistyped call cannot overwrite one of the source documents.

watch is meant for designing a template: keep the PDF open in a viewer that reloads it, and every save of the HTML or its style sheet shows up there.

Replacing wkhtmltopdf

A call without a command word is read like wkhtmltopdf's, with its 10 mm default margins, so scripts written for wkhtmltopdf keep working:

pdfpecker -s A4 -O Landscape -T 15mm --footer-center "Page [page] of [topage]" in.html out.pdf

The page size and orientation, margins, --title, --zoom, --disable-smart-shrinking, --user-style-sheet, --no-outline, --no-pdf-compression, --enable-local-file-access, -q and the --header-left/-center/-right and --footer-left/-center/-right texts (with [page], [topage], [date], [time] and [title]) work as they do there; the header and footer texts become margin boxes. Options that exist only because wkhtmltopdf runs a browser (--javascript-delay, --cookie, --header-html, --grayscale, ...) are accepted and ignored with a warning, so a script keeps running. Web addresses are refused: save the page to a file first. The wkhtmltopdf page covers moving the HTML itself.

Signing

export PDFPECKER_CERT_PASSWORD=...
pdfpecker sign contract.pdf signed.pdf --cert me.pfx --reason "I approve" --page 1 --rect 36,36,200,60
pdfpecker verify signed.pdf --trusted-root ca.cer

Passwords given on the command line are visible to other users of the machine; prefer the -env options and PDFPECKER_CERT_PASSWORD. Digital signatures has what the signatures contain.