AWS Lambda and Puppeteer: Fonts for Emoji + Non-Latin

The problem

If you want to create PDFs or screenshots of sites the best solution is Puppeteer (https://pptr.dev/). The problem is that if you have Emojis or languages such CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) they are not included in the default layers provided.

Chromium Layer

The easiest way is to use package created by Sparticuz. It's small enough to fit in a Lambda Layer etc.

• download chromium layer from here:
  https://github.com/Sparticuz/chromium/releases

• upload chromium layer to S3 bucket

• create lambda layer from chromium layer in S3 bucket

Fonts layer

Sparticuz/chromium does not include any fonts other than Open Sans. Will need fonts for emojis, and langs such as CJK.

I suggest using the font Noto by Google. You can see in my example directory I have NotoSansJP (for Japanese) NotoColorEmoji.

• add font files to a fonts folder
• run zip -9 --filesync --move --recurse-paths fonts.zip fonts/ in your CLI.
• create lambda layer from fonts.zip

Creating the Lambda

• install puppeteer-core - the version will depend on your chromium version

  • https://pptr.dev/supported-browsers
  • npm i puppeteer-core@v24.0.0

• Add the following to file:
  
  

import chromium from '@sparticuz/chromium'
import puppeteer from 'puppeteer-core'

• Attach both the Chromium and Fonts layers to your Lambda

Fonts will be automatically loaded from the /fonts directory in your attachd layer..