Helvetica.afm file missing in Next.js

[james-beston]

Bug Report

No Helvetica.afm file is being created when I use Next.js locally.

Description of the problem

I have to manually create a) the data folder and b) the Helvetica.afm file in .next/server/vendor-chunks every time I start the project.

Code sample

import { NextResponse } from 'next/server';
import PDFDocument from 'pdfkit';

export async function GET() {
  // Create a new PDF document
  const doc = new PDFDocument();

  // Create a buffer to store the PDF data
  const pdfBuffer: Buffer = await new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    const buffers: Uint8Array[] = [];
    doc.on('data', buffers.push.bind(buffers));
    doc.on('end', () => {
      const pdfData = Buffer.concat(buffers);
      resolve(pdfData);
    });

    // Add content to the PDF document
    doc.fontSize(25).text('Hello, world!', 100, 100);
    doc.fontSize(12).text('This PDF was generated server-side with pdfkit in Next.js.', 100, 150);

    // Finalize the PDF
    doc.end();
  });

  // Return the PDF as a response
  return new NextResponse(pdfBuffer, {
    headers: {
      'Content-Type': 'application/pdf',
      'Content-Length': pdfBuffer.length.toString(),
      'Content-Disposition': 'inline; filename="output.pdf"', // or 'attachment;' for download
    },
  });
}

Your environment

• pdfkit version: 0.15.0
• Node version: 20.12.2
• Next version: 14.2.9
• React version: 18.3.1

[marcoripa96]

did you find a solution? I also have the same error

[Ftwrr]

same here

[marcoripa96]

The correct solution for the current version of next is declaring pdfkit as a serverComponentExternalPackage in the nextjsconfig:

const nextConfig = {
  experimental: {
    serverComponentsExternalPackages: ["pdfkit"],
  },
};

[akulich]

The correct solution for the current version of next is declaring pdfkit as a serverComponentExternalPackage in the nextjsconfig:

const nextConfig = {
  experimental: {
    serverComponentsExternalPackages: ["pdfkit"],
  },
};

This "fix" worked for me on Next.js 14.2.16.

Thank you!

[akulich]

The correct solution for the current version of next is declaring pdfkit as a serverComponentExternalPackage in the nextjsconfig:

const nextConfig = {
  experimental: {
    serverComponentsExternalPackages: ["pdfkit"],
  },
};

This "fix" worked for me on Next.js 14.2.16.

Thank you!

Note that in Next.js 15 serverComponentsExternalPackages seemed to become a production feature as tstikvoort also mentioned in #1467. Here the docs.

So you use:

const nextConfig = {
  serverExternalPackages: ["pdfkit"],
}