wkhtmltopdf on ubuntu headless
Install wkhtmltopdf with
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wkhtmltopdf
Then try to run it, as per the example at http://wkhtmltopdf.org
wkhtmltopdf http://google.com google.pdf
Receive this error:
QXcbConnection: Could not connect to display
Aborted (core dumped)
Or -- as happened on a different day on a different machine, with a problem that had the exact same solution -- I got this error:
$ wkhtmltopdf http://google.com google.pdf
wkhtmltopdf: cannot connect to X server
The problem in both cases is that there's no desktop environment, no display, no X server.
The solution, according to http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/192642/wkhtmltopdf-qxcbconnection-could-not-connect-to-display
There is a more easy way to make John WH Smith solution.
Just install xvfb from apt and then, you can run:
xvfb-run wkhtmltopdf
i.e., just put xvfb-run before any wkhtmltopdf command.)
Okay so I ran:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xvfb
Then the command worked:
$ xvfb-run wkhtmltopdf http://google.com google.pdf
Loading page (1/2)
Printing pages (2/2)
Done
wkhtmltopdf on windows
With wkhtmltopdf on windows, I had a blocking issue, where the process would hang.
I haven't been back to see if this solves it -- but from a different project, I think that this is the solution:
process.Start();
// process can fill standard output and hang, without this:
string output = process.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();
// Wait up to 5 minutes
process.WaitForExit(5 * 60 * 1000);