Native look form printing
How to print forms in their native look
Since forms are rendered dynamically in the web browser, achieving the same appearance in print requires a browser engine. This approach involves calling an API to retrieve the HTML, then rendering it in a browser engine to produce the final HTML for printing. Typically, Puppeteer or Playwright are used for this purpose.
API
$print Operation
Returns an HTML snippet containing an iframe and a link to the form renderer.
GET /fhir/QuestionnaireResponse/[id]/$print
Parameters:
| Parameter | Type | Description | required? |
|---|---|---|---|
| config | string | SDCConfig id | optional |
| theme | string | QuestionnaireTheme id | optional |
Example:
GET /fhir/QuestionnaireResponse/[id]/$print?theme=my-theme
Response:
"<iframe src=\"link-to-form\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 100%\"></iframe>"
You can use this HTML snippet with Puppeteer (or a similar engine) to render the form and print it to PDF.
The iframe is used for embedding the form in other HTML. It will automatically load all styles and assets. The engine should wait until the content is fully rendered before printing.
If the form is too long for a single page, it can be useful to extract the styles and content from the iframe and embed them in a standard HTML element for better print control.