JSON is quite indispensable in the modern data-driven world in any application involving working with JSON, be it API responses, configuration files, or other structured data. Sometimes, though, the JSON form may not be suitable to share or present. That's where converting that JSON data into a more user-friendly format, like PDF, comes to play.

What is JSON?

Before going deep into JSON to PDF conversion, let's understand what JSON is. JSON is the abbreviation for JavaScript Object Notation. It is a lightweight data-interchange format that is easy for humans to read and write as well as easy for machines to parse and generate.

This is a text-based format that's often used for transmitting data between a server and a web application or between different services in an application. JSON data consists of key-value pairs and is typically used in API responses, configuration files, and more.

Example of JSON data:
{
    "name": "John Doe",
    "email": "john.doe@example.com",
    "address": {
        "street": "1234 Elm St",
        "city": "Springfield",
        "zip": "12345"
    }
}

Why Convert JSON to PDF?

JSON files are fabulous for machines, but if you want to share or present your data in a more consumable form, PDF will be better. PDFs are accessible to everyone and can easily be printed, making them the default of choice for many professional documentation needs.

Converting JSON into PDF ensures that you can feed people nicely readable, formatted reports, data visualizations, or structured documents.

Some typical use cases for converting JSON into PDF are:

Generating reports from JSON data for business or client review.
Generation of documents such as invoices, contracts, or receipts by using JSON-based information.
Data visualization involves the raw JSON being transformed into formatted tables, charts, or graphs in a PDF document.

JSON to PDF in Python: A Step-by-Step Guide

Among the most popular programming languages, Python has a few libraries and tools for manipulating JSON data and even generating PDFs. The two most common Python libraries used when dealing with JSON and PDFs are json and reportlab. Below is a step-by-step guide on how you can convert JSON data to PDF using Python.

Step 1: Install Necessary Libraries

Begin with the installation of necessary libraries. To perform PDF generation, you require reportlab. If you are working with JSON data, python's built-in library json will come handy.

pip install reportlab

Step 2: Get Your JSON Data Ready

For demonstration, assume you have a JSON file or a Python dictionary containing structured data that you would like to write into PDF.

Example JSON

    "product": "Laptop",
    "price": 1200,
"features": ["16GB RAM", "512GB SSD", "Intel i7 Processor"]
}

Step 3: Write Python Code for Conversion

You can create Python code in the following manner to convert JSON data into PDF:

import json
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.lib import colors
from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Table, TableStyle

# JSON data
data = {
    "product": "Laptop",
    "price": 1200,
    "features": ["16GB RAM", "512GB SSD", "Intel i7 Processor"]
}

# Output PDF
pdf_file = "output.pdf"
document = SimpleDocTemplate(pdf_file, pagesize=letter)

# Convert JSON to table format for PDF
table_data = [["Key", "Value"]]
for key, value in data.items():
    table_data.append([key, str(value)])

# Create table in PDF
table = Table(table_data)
table.setStyle(TableStyle([
    ('BACKGROUND', (0, 0), (-1, 0), colors.grey),
    ('TEXTCOLOR', (0, 0), (-1, 0), colors.whitesmoke),
    ('ALIGN', (0, 0), (-1, -1), 'CENTER'),
('FONTNAME', (0, 0), (-1, -1), 'Helvetica'),
    ('GRID', (0, 0), (-1, -1), 1, colors.black),
    ('FONTSIZE', (0, 0), (-1, -1), 12),
])
Build PDF
document.build([table])
print("PDF created successfully!")

Step 4: Customise PDF Appearance

The code will then create a simple PDF with a table that shows your JSON data. You can further go on and add more formatting, such as adding in different fonts, color schemes, and even adjust the layout for some better printouts.

Other Methods to Convert JSON to PDF

JSON to PDF in JavaScript

JavaScript is another language commonly used for working with JSON. For web-based applications, the ability to take JSON data and convert it to a PDF in the browser is a key functionality. Popular for this type of work is the jsPDF library. You can take the JSON objects and directly convert them to a PDF by using this library and creating the PDFs in the browser.
Here's a simple example in jsPDF:

const { jsPDF } = require("jspdf");

const jsonData = {
  name: "John Doe",
  age: 30,
  country: "USA"
};

const doc = new jsPDF();
doc.text(JSON.stringify(jsonData, null, 2), 10, 10);
doc.save("json-to-pdf.pdf");

This code will generate a PDF file from the JSON data using the jsPDF library.

JSON to PDF using npm

When working in Node.js, the npm package json2pdf is the best to convert JSON data into a PDF. That tool can take structure data and print a simple PDF file straight from your JSON content.
 
You can install the json2pdf package via npm
 
npm install json2pdf

Adobe JSON to PDF

There are a number of Adobe solutions for creating PDFs, but there is no direct tool from Adobe for converting JSON to PDF. However, via Adobe Acrobat, users can create and modify PDF documents from other types of document format. You can add JSON data to your workflows in Adobe by first transforming it into a structured format like HTML or CSV, and then use the tools from Adobe to create your PDFs.

JSON to PDF Large File Conversion

This request can be handled in Python with efficient memory management and processing. Tools like PyPDF2 for dealing with PDF files combined with json.load() for parsing large JSON data will help in dealing with large JSON files. Chunking techniques combined with streaming content to the PDF file will prevent memory overload.

Open Source Tools for Conversion of JSON to PDF

If you require open-source solutions, here are a few libraries and tools you can use for JSON to PDF conversions.

Some of the famous ones include:

SmallPDFFree: SmallPDFFree's JSON To PDF Converter Convert JSON data in various formats, including plain text to custom tables, into PDFs and have them as editable or non-editable files, free and without requiring an account. It's easy to share insights, reports, and data visualization with clarity and precision.

The Steps:

ReportLab: As demonstrated above, it is an open-source Python library for generating PDF.

Pandas & Matplotlib: To convert larger JSON data into tables or charts and export them as PDF.

jsPDF: Famous open-source PDF generation library in JavaScript.

json2pdf: An open-source, simple solution to convert JSON data into PDFs with npm.

JSON to PDF is simple in nature. Libraries, such as reportlab in Python, have made the conversion process easier. Be it reporting, making invoices, or visualizing data, Python's toolset gives excellent leverage for JSON and PDF generation. Developers working in JavaScript or Java can also make use of tools such as jsPDF or, for example, json2pdf libraries.

For big JSON files, as well as for more complex formatting, Python's rich library ecosystem gives you all that flexibility that you need. Open source also allows developers to freely have access to solutions, which can be adjusted according to their needs. Understanding how JSON can efficiently turn into a PDF document helps streamline the workflow and improve user experiences developed by professionals.

With these techniques and libraries, you have all the flexibility you need to put together conversion tasks from JSON to PDF and generate professional, well-readable documents for all kinds of applications.

References about PDFs: 

Simplify Data Migration with PDF to XML Conversion

The Environmental Benefits of PDF to XML Conversion

How to Convert PDF to XML Using Python