Winnovative HTML-to-PDF no longer converts Google charts

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Phil Winant

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Jul 9, 2020, 6:19:50 PM7/9/20
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Just wondering if anybody else has seen this. We use Winnovative's HTML-to-PDF converter and it was working fine up until today (maybe? honestly I'm not 100% sure when the problem started, but I'm guessing in the last day or so). I haven't updated the converter or touched our charting code in months so I don't know what could have caused this until it was the Google API changing somehow. The charts show up perfectly in HTML but the PDF conversion just returns a blank rectangle.

Daniel LaLiberte

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Jul 9, 2020, 6:26:32 PM7/9/20
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Hi Phil,

If there is an IE11 browser involved in this converter, that would explain it.  The latest loader includes a change that breaks when run in IE11 due to a missing polyfill.   If this is the problem, I hope to have a fix soon.  Otherwise I have no idea.   That's the only thing that has changed in the last day.  

Several days ago, the server that used to provide Google Charts modules was shut down.  This would be a problem if a copy of the old jsapi loader is being used, rather than relying on the redirect to the new loader.

On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 6:20 PM Phil Winant <pwi...@gmail.com> wrote:
Just wondering if anybody else has seen this. We use Winnovative's HTML-to-PDF converter and it was working fine up until today (maybe? honestly I'm not 100% sure when the problem started, but I'm guessing in the last day or so). I haven't updated the converter or touched our charting code in months so I don't know what could have caused this until it was the Google API changing somehow. The charts show up perfectly in HTML but the PDF conversion just returns a blank rectangle.

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Phil Winant

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Jul 9, 2020, 7:17:28 PM7/9/20
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Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the info. I didn't realize it until this issue came up, but we had a weird combination of references in our web page. It had references to both https://www.google.com/jsapi and https://www.gstatic.com/charts/loader.js scripts. But it was using the old style of loading: 

     google.load("visualization", "1", { packages: ["corechart"] });

I updated that to the correct new code and remove the /jsapi reference, and again the HTML renders perfectly fine but the PDF converter won't convert it. So I don't know if this is an issue that was always lurking but somehow worked fine with the /jsapi version and no longer works with the newer code but that seems to be the case. Is it possible for me to download the older chart script files somewhere and go back to the older style of loading and see if that fixes the problem? It looks like the "old" /jsapi URL just redirects to the new /loader.js script now.

Thanks,
Phil

On Thursday, July 9, 2020 at 3:26:32 PM UTC-7, Daniel LaLiberte wrote:
Hi Phil,

If there is an IE11 browser involved in this converter, that would explain it.  The latest loader includes a change that breaks when run in IE11 due to a missing polyfill.   If this is the problem, I hope to have a fix soon.  Otherwise I have no idea.   That's the only thing that has changed in the last day.  

Several days ago, the server that used to provide Google Charts modules was shut down.  This would be a problem if a copy of the old jsapi loader is being used, rather than relying on the redirect to the new loader.

On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 6:20 PM Phil Winant <pwi...@gmail.com> wrote:
Just wondering if anybody else has seen this. We use Winnovative's HTML-to-PDF converter and it was working fine up until today (maybe? honestly I'm not 100% sure when the problem started, but I'm guessing in the last day or so). I haven't updated the converter or touched our charting code in months so I don't know what could have caused this until it was the Google API changing somehow. The charts show up perfectly in HTML but the PDF conversion just returns a blank rectangle.

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Daniel LaLiberte

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Jul 9, 2020, 8:16:27 PM7/9/20
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The older jsapi loader is no longer available, except as a redirect to the new loader.

The closest version of Google Charts compared to what used to be available via the jsapi loader is '45.2'.  Try that version to see if it helps.  Otherwise, I don't know how to help you because I don't know what the PDF converter did.  It may have been calling one of the undocumented internal jsapi functions, for example.

On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 7:17 PM Phil Winant <pwi...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the info. I didn't realize it until this issue came up, but we had a weird combination of references in our web page. It had references to both https://www.google.com/jsapi and https://www.gstatic.com/charts/loader.js scripts. But it was using the old style of loading: 

     google.load("visualization", "1", { packages: ["corechart"] });

I updated that to the correct new code and remove the /jsapi reference, and again the HTML renders perfectly fine but the PDF converter won't convert it. So I don't know if this is an issue that was always lurking but somehow worked fine with the /jsapi version and no longer works with the newer code but that seems to be the case. Is it possible for me to download the older chart script files somewhere and go back to the older style of loading and see if that fixes the problem? It looks like the "old" /jsapi URL just redirects to the new /loader.js script now.

Thanks,
Phil

On Thursday, July 9, 2020 at 3:26:32 PM UTC-7, Daniel LaLiberte wrote:
Hi Phil,

If there is an IE11 browser involved in this converter, that would explain it.  The latest loader includes a change that breaks when run in IE11 due to a missing polyfill.   If this is the problem, I hope to have a fix soon.  Otherwise I have no idea.   That's the only thing that has changed in the last day.  

Several days ago, the server that used to provide Google Charts modules was shut down.  This would be a problem if a copy of the old jsapi loader is being used, rather than relying on the redirect to the new loader.

On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 6:20 PM Phil Winant <pwi...@gmail.com> wrote:
Just wondering if anybody else has seen this. We use Winnovative's HTML-to-PDF converter and it was working fine up until today (maybe? honestly I'm not 100% sure when the problem started, but I'm guessing in the last day or so). I haven't updated the converter or touched our charting code in months so I don't know what could have caused this until it was the Google API changing somehow. The charts show up perfectly in HTML but the PDF conversion just returns a blank rectangle.

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Phil Winant

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Jul 9, 2020, 8:47:27 PM7/9/20
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I assume the correct way to do that is as follows?

google.charts.load('45.2', { packages: ['corechart'] });

If so, that's not working either. :-(

The PDF converter shouldn't be invoking any javascript except what I put into the page, so I don't think that's the issue. Regarding the IE11 issue you mentioned: I don't know the internals of the converter, but I believe it uses WebKit as its rendering engine.

I was hoping I could somehow get the older jsapi script and just load it statically on my website.



On Thursday, July 9, 2020 at 5:16:27 PM UTC-7, Daniel LaLiberte wrote:
The older jsapi loader is no longer available, except as a redirect to the new loader.

The closest version of Google Charts compared to what used to be available via the jsapi loader is '45.2'.  Try that version to see if it helps.  Otherwise, I don't know how to help you because I don't know what the PDF converter did.  It may have been calling one of the undocumented internal jsapi functions, for example.

On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 7:17 PM Phil Winant <pwi...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the info. I didn't realize it until this issue came up, but we had a weird combination of references in our web page. It had references to both https://www.google.com/jsapi and https://www.gstatic.com/charts/loader.js scripts. But it was using the old style of loading: 

     google.load("visualization", "1", { packages: ["corechart"] });

I updated that to the correct new code and remove the /jsapi reference, and again the HTML renders perfectly fine but the PDF converter won't convert it. So I don't know if this is an issue that was always lurking but somehow worked fine with the /jsapi version and no longer works with the newer code but that seems to be the case. Is it possible for me to download the older chart script files somewhere and go back to the older style of loading and see if that fixes the problem? It looks like the "old" /jsapi URL just redirects to the new /loader.js script now.

Thanks,
Phil

On Thursday, July 9, 2020 at 3:26:32 PM UTC-7, Daniel LaLiberte wrote:
Hi Phil,

If there is an IE11 browser involved in this converter, that would explain it.  The latest loader includes a change that breaks when run in IE11 due to a missing polyfill.   If this is the problem, I hope to have a fix soon.  Otherwise I have no idea.   That's the only thing that has changed in the last day.  

Several days ago, the server that used to provide Google Charts modules was shut down.  This would be a problem if a copy of the old jsapi loader is being used, rather than relying on the redirect to the new loader.

On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 6:20 PM Phil Winant <pwi...@gmail.com> wrote:
Just wondering if anybody else has seen this. We use Winnovative's HTML-to-PDF converter and it was working fine up until today (maybe? honestly I'm not 100% sure when the problem started, but I'm guessing in the last day or so). I haven't updated the converter or touched our charting code in months so I don't know what could have caused this until it was the Google API changing somehow. The charts show up perfectly in HTML but the PDF conversion just returns a blank rectangle.

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Phil Winant

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Jul 10, 2020, 1:35:22 AM7/10/20
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Well suddenly everything on our live server is working again, and I didn't change anything so I'm assuming someone at Google did?

Daniel LaLiberte

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Jul 10, 2020, 1:51:19 AM7/10/20
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I pushed out another change to the loader so that IE11 won't fail.  The fact that your PDF converted is working again appears to confirm that it depends on IE11 in some way, or perhaps an earlier version of IE.

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Phil Winant

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Jul 10, 2020, 12:19:59 PM7/10/20
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Interesting. Ok, well thank you very much for the fix! I'm still seeing some odd behavior with the older style of loading the chart libraries (like in certain situations the charts don't show up in the browser now, but they do show up in the PDF, which is very bizarre) but I need to update my code to use the new loading style consistently so that's on me.

Thanks again for the help/fix.

Phil
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Robert Bachelder

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Sep 4, 2020, 3:15:55 PM9/4/20
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I am having the same issue with both PDFtoRocket and Itext PDF rendering tools.  Works fine in regular browsers but as soon as I try to send it to a PDF the chart dissapears.  Tried doing it as an image, tried referencing older versions.  Has worked for years and now all the sudden I cant get it to work for anything.  Any ideas?
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