Pdf to image conversion in angular (Node)

 

PDF TO IMAGE IN ANGULAR

 

Prerequisite:

We need to install the below two exe’s for pdf to image conversion

http://www.graphicsmagick.org/  -  GraphicsMagick-1.3.34-Q16-win32-dll.exe

https://www.ghostscript.com/ - gs909w64.exe

 

Available node packages for pdf to image conversion in Angular:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/pdf2image

https://www.npmjs.com/package/pdf2pic

https://www.npmjs.com/package/pdf-poppler

https://www.npmjs.com/package/pdf-image

https://www.npmjs.com/package/file-convert

 

Issue faced when integrated these libraries:

Module not found: Error: Can't resolve 'child_process' in 'D:\Angular\imagepdfpoc\node_modules\pdf-poppler'

 

What is child_process:

Child_process used to execute the terminal commends through node server. This package executes the (GraphicsMagick, GhostScript) exe’s for convert the pdf to image.

Ref: https://www.npmjs.com/package/child_process

 

Child_process package holding by node security holder to avoid malicious use

 

Solution:

You may adopt this package by contacting support@npmjs.com and requesting the name

 

Command line commands for pdf to file conversion:

Using GraphicsMagick (gm) + Ghostscript = “gm convert -size 120x120 a.pdf -resize 120x120 temp.jpg”

Using GhostScript (gm) = “"C:\\Program Files\\gs\\gs9.52\\bin\\gswin64c.exe" -sDEVICE=pngalpha -o file-%03d.png -r144 a.pdf”

 

 

File conversion successfully worked when we execute the below code through the command line (Terminal) tool manually.

Sample source code for file conversion using child_process through command line tool:

 

const { exec } = require('child_process');

exec('"C:\\Program Files\\gs\\gs9.52\\bin\\gswin64c.exe" -sDEVICE=pngalpha -o file-%03d.png -r144 a.pdf', (error, stdout, stderr) => {

  if (error) {

    console.error(`error: ${error.message}`);

    return;

  }

  if (stderr) {

    console.error(`stderr: ${stderr}`);

    return;

  }

  console.log(`stdout:\n${stdout}`);

});

 

 

 

Conclusion:

This issue only occurred in windows environment. We can use any one of the above node library for converting pdf to image. We need to contact to node js support team and get the access of “child_process” node package.