web2pdf for TYPO3

Why web2pdf is indispensable for TYPO3 websites with price lists and product pages

Sales teams need printable PDFs. Customers expect a “Save as PDF” button on product pages. And industrial purchasers download price lists to forward them internally. web2pdf solves exactly this problem: the extension renders any TYPO3 page as a PDF - with correct layout, embedded images and clean typography. Instead of manually creating each page as a PDF and updating it with every change, web2pdf generates the PDF live from the current page content.

This saves not only editorial time but also prevents outdated PDF versions. When a product price is changed in the CMS, web2pdf automatically delivers the current version on the next download.

Typical use cases

Product catalogs and price lists in B2B. A mechanical engineering company maintains 200 product pages in TYPO3. The sales force needs a printable data sheet for every product. web2pdf generates a PDF from each product page with logo, technical specifications and contact information in corporate design. The editor maintains only one source - the web page - and the PDF updates automatically.

Articles and white papers as downloads. Media companies and specialist publishers offer magazine articles as PDF downloads. web2pdf converts the article including images and formatting into a print-optimized PDF. A print CSS controls which elements appear in the PDF (content) and which do not (navigation, footer, cookie banner).

Quotes and configurations. Configurator results, quote summaries or cart overviews can be exported as PDFs via web2pdf. The user clicks “Quote as PDF” and receives a print-ready document with all selected options. An automobile configurator that outputs the chosen equipment as PDF, an insurance calculator that provides the offer for download - the use cases are broad and the benefit for sales is immediately measurable.

Technical architecture

web2pdf functions as a TYPO3 extension with a frontend plugin that displays a PDF download button on each page. On click, the extension internally calls the current page and passes the HTML output to a PDF rendering backend.

The extension supports two rendering engines:

• wkhtmltopdf: the classic solution based on an older WebKit version. Advantages: simple installation as a single binary, low resource consumption. Disadvantages: CSS Flexbox and Grid are not supported, web fonts work only partially, the project has not been actively maintained since 2022.
• Puppeteer/Chromium: the modern alternative. Puppeteer controls a headless Chromium browser that renders the page like a normal browser and exports it as PDF. Full CSS support (Flexbox, Grid, Custom Properties), correct web font embedding, JavaScript execution. Disadvantage: higher resource consumption (Chromium requires approx. 100-200 MB RAM per rendering process).

The extension is configured through TypoScript and extension settings in the TYPO3 Install Tool. Key parameters: PDF page size (A4, Letter, custom), margins, header/footer templates, cookie handling for authenticated content.

A separate print CSS (@media print) controls which elements are visible in the PDF. Gosign recommends hiding navigation, footer, cookie banner and interactive elements in the print CSS and instead inserting logo, contact details and a URL reference. A well-configured print CSS makes the difference between a professional data sheet and a screenshot of the web page. Typical adjustments: font size at 11pt for print readability, page breaks before H2 headings, QR code with the source URL in the footer.

Common problems and solutions

PDF shows wrong layout, missing images or fonts. Most common cause: wkhtmltopdf cannot render modern CSS. Websites using Flexbox or CSS Grid look completely different in the PDF than in the browser. Solution: switch to Puppeteer as the rendering engine. Alternatively, create a separate print CSS with layout fallbacks for older rendering engines.

PDF generation takes 10+ seconds. Puppeteer starts a Chromium process for each PDF. With concurrent requests, server load multiplies. Solution: implement PDF caching. The generated PDF is cached in the file system for a defined period (e.g. 60 minutes). Only when page content changes is the PDF regenerated. On servers with limited RAM (under 2 GB), wkhtmltopdf is the more pragmatic choice despite CSS limitations.

Authenticated pages deliver empty PDF. web2pdf calls the page internally via HTTP. If the page sits behind a login, session cookies are missing and the rendering process sees only the login page. Solution: configure a special PDF rendering endpoint that handles authentication via a token instead of session cookies.

Migration and version compatibility

web2pdf is stably available for TYPO3 v10 and v11. For TYPO3 v12 LTS, community forks exist that establish compatibility. The original package is no longer actively maintained.

For TYPO3 v13 and beyond, Gosign recommends an architectural shift: instead of running web2pdf as a TYPO3 extension, implement PDF generation as a separate microservice. A Node.js service with Puppeteer accepts URLs and returns PDFs. This decouples PDF generation from the TYPO3 server, reduces server load and makes the solution TYPO3-version-independent.

The migration effort from web2pdf to a Puppeteer-based solution is typically 2 to 4 days. Existing print CSS files can be reused 1:1. Only the invocation mechanism (button click, URL handling) needs adjustment.

A frequently underestimated aspect of PDF generation: accessibility. PDFs generated from HTML are not automatically accessible. For companies subject to the European Accessibility Act (EAA, effective June 2025), generated PDFs must contain tagged PDF structures. Neither wkhtmltopdf nor Puppeteer produce accessible PDFs by default. Gosign recommends a post-processing step with a specialized PDF library (e.g. TCPDF or mPDF with tag support) that translates HTML semantics into PDF tags.