Hey everyone,
I’m thinking about switching from iText to Chrome’s headless mode for creating PDFs in our app. Has anyone tried this in a real-world setting? I’m worried about how it’ll handle lots of requests at once.
Some questions I have:
- Can Chrome’s headless PDF printing handle heavy traffic?
- Is it mainly for testing, or can it work for big companies too?
- If one machine can’t handle it, would using AWS Lambda be a good fix?
I’d love to hear from folks who’ve dealt with this before. Any tips or warnings would be super helpful. Thanks!
I’ve implemented Chrome’s headless mode for PDF generation in our production environment, and it’s been quite reliable. We handle a moderate volume of requests daily without issues. The key advantage is the consistency in rendering web content to PDF, which was crucial for our use case.
Performance-wise, it’s been stable, but we did encounter some memory-related challenges initially. We resolved these by implementing a worker pool system to manage Chrome instances effectively. This approach helped us maintain performance even under increased load.
For scaling, we use a combination of vertical scaling (more powerful machines) and horizontal scaling (multiple instances). This setup has proven sufficient for our needs without resorting to serverless solutions like AWS Lambda.
One caveat: ensure you have a robust error handling and logging system in place. While rare, we’ve experienced occasional crashes that required careful monitoring and automatic restarts to maintain service reliability.
I’ve been using Chrome’s headless mode for PDF generation in production for about a year now, and I can say it’s been a game-changer for us. We switched from a custom solution that was becoming a nightmare to maintain, and Chrome’s headless mode has been rock-solid.
In terms of handling heavy traffic, we’ve had no issues. We’re processing thousands of PDFs daily, and it’s holding up well. The key is proper resource management and scaling. We use a containerized setup with Kubernetes, which allows us to scale horizontally as demand increases.
As for big companies, I know of several enterprise-level operations using it successfully. It’s not just for testing anymore.
AWS Lambda could work, but we found that running our own cluster gave us more control and was more cost-effective at our scale. If you’re just starting out, Lambda might be a good way to test the waters without a big infrastructure investment.
One tip: keep an eye on memory usage. Chrome can be a bit of a resource hog if not managed properly. We implemented a job queue system to prevent overload and ensure smooth operation even during peak times.
yea chrome headless works great for pdfs in prod. we use it for high-volume stuff, no probs. key is good resource mgmt - we use docker containers. AWS lambda could work but maybe overkill for starters. watch out for memory leaks tho, gotta restart chrome instances sometimes. overall solid choice imo