Migration Guide v6

This document tracks the breaking changes planned for the next major release and the minimum migration work needed in applications, examples, and local tooling.

Breaking Changes

Change	Affected users	Required action
ESM-only packages	Anyone using require('@pdfme/...')	Move to import / export syntax
Node 20+ minimum runtime	Node 16 / 18 users	Upgrade to Node 20 LTS or newer
Internal dist/* imports removed	Anyone importing @pdfme/*/dist/... or @pdfme/*/cjs/src/...	Import only from package root exports
Text-only default plugin registry	Anyone relying on implicit non-text schema support	Import non-text plugins explicitly

Support Policy

Item	Policy
Runtime	Node 20+
Browser target	es2020
Module format	ESM-only

Migrations

CommonJS to ESM

Before:

const { BLANK_PDF } = require('@pdfme/common');
const { generate } = require('@pdfme/generator');

After:

import { BLANK_PDF } from '@pdfme/common';
import { generate } from '@pdfme/generator';

If you write files in Node.js from ESM, replace __dirname usage with fileURLToPath(import.meta.url).

import fs from 'node:fs';
import path from 'node:path';
import { fileURLToPath } from 'node:url';

const __filename = fileURLToPath(import.meta.url);
const __dirname = path.dirname(__filename);

Internal Package Paths

Before:

import { generate } from '@pdfme/generator/cjs/src/index.js';
import { pdf2img } from '@pdfme/converter/cjs/src/index.node.js';

After:

import { generate } from '@pdfme/generator';
import { pdf2img } from '@pdfme/converter';

Node 20+

Update local development and CI to Node 20 LTS or newer before adopting the next major release.

Text-only Default Plugin Registry

@pdfme/generator, Designer, Form, and Viewer now treat the default built-in plugin registry as text-only. Non-text schema types such as image, signature, table, barcodes, select, radioGroup, and checkbox must be imported from @pdfme/schemas and passed through plugins.

Before:

import { generate } from '@pdfme/generator';

await generate({ template, inputs });

After:

import { generate } from '@pdfme/generator';
import { text, image, signature, table, barcodes } from '@pdfme/schemas';

await generate({
  template,
  inputs,
  plugins: {
    text,
    image,
    signature,
    table,
    qrcode: barcodes.qrcode,
  },
});

Maintainer Checklist

• Announce the policy before release in GitHub Discussions or Issues.
• Update examples, docs, and the playground to use public package exports only.
• Remove remaining require() examples from Node-focused samples.
• Verify no documentation recommends internal dist/* imports.