Visualforce Developer’s Guide

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Best Practices for Rendering PDFs

Rendering a Visualforce page as a PDF is a great way to easily share information about your Salesforce organization. In addition to the guidelines listed in Rendering a Visualforce Page in PDF Format, you should familiarize yourself with the following concepts.

PDF Rendering Performance

For better performance when rendering Visualforce pages as PDFs, reference static image and stylesheet resources through the $Resource global variable.

Referencing static resources on a remote server increases the time it takes to render a Visualforce page as a PDF. You need to add remote servers to your permitted Remote Sites list under Setup, in Security Controls | Remote Sites Settings. You can’t reference remote resources when using Visualforce to render PDFs in an Apex trigger; doing so results in an exception.

Warning

Component Behavior in PDFs

The following section lists the components that can always be used in a PDF, the components that may not always work, and the components that can never be used. As a general rule, don’t use components that:
  • Rely on JavaScript to perform an action
  • Depend on Salesforce stylesheets
To check if your Visualforce page falls into one of these categories, you can right-click anywhere on the page and view the HTML source. If you see a <script> tag that refers to JavaScript (.js) or a <link> tag that refers to a stylesheet (.css), you should test that the generated PDF displays as expected.

Components That Are Safe to Use in a PDF

  • <apex:composition> (as long as the page contains PDF-safe components)
  • <apex:dataList>
  • <apex:define>
  • <apex:facet>
  • <apex:include> (as long as the page contains PDF-safe components)
  • <apex:insert>
  • <apex:image>
  • <apex:outputLabel>
  • <apex:outputLink>
  • <apex:outputPanel>
  • <apex:outputText>
  • <apex:page>
  • <apex:panelGrid>
  • <apex:panelGroup>
  • <apex:param>
  • <apex:repeat>
  • <apex:stylesheet> (as long as the URL isn’t directly referencing Salesforce stylesheets)
  • <apex:variable>

Components to Use with Caution in a PDF

  • <apex:attribute>
  • <apex:column>
  • <apex:component>
  • <apex:componentBody>
  • <apex:dataTable>

Components That Are Unsafe to Use in a PDF

  • <apex:actionFunction>
  • <apex:actionPoller>
  • <apex:actionRegion>
  • <apex:actionStatus>
  • <apex:actionSupport>
  • <apex:commandButton>
  • <apex:commandLink>
  • <apex:detail>
  • <apex:enhancedList>
  • <apex:flash>
  • <apex:form>
  • <apex:iframe>
  • <apex:includeScript>
  • <apex:inputCheckbox>
  • <apex:inputField>
  • <apex:inputFile>
  • <apex:inputHidden>
  • <apex:inputSecret>
  • <apex:inputText>
  • <apex:inputTextarea>
  • <apex:listViews>
  • <apex:message>
  • <apex:messages>
  • <apex:outputField>
  • <apex:pageBlock>
  • <apex:pageBlockButtons>
  • <apex:pageBlockSection>
  • <apex:pageBlockSectionItem>
  • <apex:pageBlockTable>
  • <apex:pageMessage>
  • <apex:pageMessages>
  • <apex:panelBar>
  • <apex:panelBarItem>
  • <apex:relatedList>
  • <apex:scontrol>
  • <apex:sectionHeader>
  • <apex:selectCheckboxes>
  • <apex:selectList>
  • <apex:selectOption>
  • <apex:selectOptions>
  • <apex:selectRadio>
  • <apex:tab>
  • <apex:tabPanel>
  • <apex:toolbar>
  • <apex:toolbarGroup>