Is there a way to generated several PDFs from a loop and store them without saving the files to disk?

Question

I am trying generate several individual pdfs from html in a group of elements within a node on a webpage with jsPDF. (Report cards for students). Then I need to email the individual report cards to each students parent using JavaMail.

The problem is: I don't want to save the pdf files to disk as they are generated, instead I want to programmatically loop through the report card elements in the page (id="'studentCard_' + studentId", generate the individual pdfs from the html and store or push each individual pdf into an array or object on the fly (as they are created) that I can then pass over to JavaMail and loop through to attach each individual pdf to the associated parents email.

I can convert the html to pdf without a hitch...

I am just not sure as to how to then attach this pdf to the email since the only option is to pdf.save(filename), and I don't want to actually SAVE each individually generated pdf in the loop to disk - I just want to temporarily store the generated file before I attach it to the emails and send it out.

I have converted the pdf to a blob and a blob URL and I am able to then push the blob into an array. Can I just convert the pdf to a blob or blob url and push it to an array and then loop through that array and attach that to the email. Is this my Solution to convert each pdf to a blob, then push the blob to an array to be passed on to JavaMail to loop through?

I don't know anything about this aspect of my problem. If I attach a blob to the email, or insert the blob URL in the body, when the parent clicks on the file to download it, or clicks on the link inserted into the body, will it automatically be converted back to PDF format for them to read by their own mail program or in the browser? How do I do this correctly?

Answer 1

You may use IndexedDB, the client-side storage of the browser. I like JsStore, an IndexedDB wrapper. I have used it for a couple of my projects. It's pretty neat.

pdf.save(filename) is NOT the only option. You should be able to use pdf.output(datauristring) or pdf.output('blob') and save it to IndexedDB. Depends on your pdf file size, you may even use localStorage, which is easier to use but has much less storage than idb.