In simple English
This tool fills data into standard document templates to create PDF, Word, and Excel files. You design your layouts in LibreOffice or Microsoft Office and use simple tags for names and numbers. Your application sends data as JSON and gets back finished files. The free community version is always one major version behind the paid enterprise edition. You can run it on your own server using Node.js.
What it is
Carbone is a report generator library and server tool that combines JSON data with office templates. It replaces tags like company names and tables inside documents and converts the output to PDF using LibreOffice.
What it is good for
Developers who need to generate invoices, certificates, or reports from user data without writing complex PDF layout code from scratch.
- Design reports using familiar office software like LibreOffice or Word.
- Generates PDF, DOCX, XLSX, ODT, and PPTX from the same template.
- Handles complex nested loops for tables and lists automatically.
- The free open-source version lags one major version behind the enterprise edition.
- Requires a running LibreOffice installation on your server for PDF conversion.
- Custom licence terms restrict selling the software as a hosted document service.
manual document formatting and heavy PDF generation libraries
Node.js and LibreOffice
- Hack-with-Github/Awesome-Hacking123k stars
An index of 81 curated security reading lists, with one line on each.
- Zettlr/Zettlr14k stars
A desktop writing program for Markdown documents, with citation support and export to Word, PDF and LaTeX.
- JabRef/jabref4.8k stars
A desktop citation and reference manager that stores its library as a plain BibTeX file.
npm install carbone