# Puppeteer in native custom APIs

> Install the libraries Chromium needs on an Ubuntu server, add Puppeteer to API Maker and turn HTML into a PDF from a custom API on the native process.

Source: https://docs.apimaker.dev/v1/docs/blog/General-Blogs/setup-puppeteer-and-use-in-Native-custom-APIs.html

## Puppeteer installation

1. Log in as the **root user** in your server where API Maker instance is hosted.

2. This step will help you install dependencies essential for using puppeteer. This command is used for **ubuntu** servers. If your servers uses any other os image then you should refer to [puppeteer](https://pptr.dev/troubleshooting#chrome-doesnt-launch-on-linux) documentation for more details.  Install the necessary dependencies for puppeteer using this command:
```shell
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y \
  ca-certificates \
  fonts-liberation \
  libatk1.0-0t64 \
  libatk-bridge2.0-0t64 \
  libc6 \
  libcairo2 \
  libcups2 \
  libdbus-1-3 \
  libexpat1 \
  libfontconfig1 \
  libgbm1 \
  libgcc1 \
  libglib2.0-0 \
  libgtk-3-0 \
  libnspr4 \
  libnss3 \
  libpango-1.0-0 \
  libpangocairo-1.0-0 \
  libstdc++6 \
  libx11-6 \
  libx11-xcb1 \
  libxcb1 \
  libxcomposite1 \
  libxcursor1 \
  libxdamage1 \
  libxext6 \
  libxfixes3 \
  libxi6 \
  libxrandr2 \
  libxrender1 \
  libxss1 \
  libxtst6 \
  libasound2t64 \
  lsb-release \
  wget \
  xdg-utils
```

3. After confirming the Installation Navigate to the project directory using this command:
```shell
cd /root/projects/sava_api_maker/
```

4. Now run the this command to install puppeteer.
```
npm install puppeteer
```

5. At this point puppeteer is installed in your server successfully, In the next section we will see how to use the package in your code.

---

## How to Use puppeteer in your Custom API.

1. The first step is to make the custom API run on native process, by defining this property in API Configuration.
```typescript
runOnNativeProcess: true
```

2. Here is the simple custom API Example using puppeteer for PDF generation.
```typescript
import * as T from 'types';
import { join } from "path";
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');

async function main(g: T.IAMGlobal) {

const filePath = join(__dirname, 'uploads', 'puppeteer.pdf');
const html = `
	<!DOCTYPE html>
	<html>
		<body>
			<p>Hello, this paragraph is converted to a PDF using Puppeteer.</p>
		</body>
	</html>
`;
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
	headless: 'new',
	args: ['--no-sandbox','--disable-setuid-sandbox']
});
const page = await browser.newPage();
// Load HTML
await page.setContent(html, { waitUntil: 'load' });

// Create PDF
await page.pdf({
	path: filePath,
	format: 'A4',
	printBackground: true,
});
await browser.close();

// `filePath` contains the location of the generated PDF.
// You can use this path to upload the file to a storage provider
// or serve it for download.

return "ok";
};

module.exports = main;
```

Reference Pages:

[Puppeteer docs](https://pptr.dev/category/introduction)

[File Upload/Download in API Maker](https://docs.apimaker.dev/v1/examples/custom-apis/custom-api.html#download-file)