Ask HN: Best Slide API?

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7 points by itslogotime 2233 days ago

Hey all - we're looking for an API for rendering PowerPoint slides... is there any third party service that you've had a good experience with?

Ideally, we're looking to send a JSON payload describing the slide and receive back the URL to download it.

If you haven't used a third party, any tips on building this? Does anyone currently deal with creating slides programmatically for clients?

Many thanks, Josh

6 comments

I've only played around with it a bit and haven't used it extensively before, but PptxGenJS may be what you need to build this yourself.

Thank you - this is helpful.

Have you ever had to add slide rendering as a feature for customers?

If you are comfortable using Google Slides instead of powerpoint they have an API that might be useful here.

Thanks - have you ever had to add slide rendering as a customer-facing feature?

This gsuite functionality looks good!

Nope, can't say that I have.

We had to back burner this feature, because making slides wasn't a core feature for us.

But it is a pain... haven't seen a third party, but have made something similar in the past with open source libs

Yeah there are open source libs; but it's kind of annoying to implement. Think OP is asking for third party service

Anyone else have any insight / advice on this? Would really appreciate it!

dont know of any services that do this, but there are plenty of open source libs

Thanks - can you point me to one of the open source libs you've had a good experience with?

would you buy it if I build it?