Go by Example PDF Generator

A tool that automatically generates a comprehensive PDF e-book from the Go by Example website. It downloads all Go programming examples and creates a single, navigable PDF with bookmarks and a table of contents. This is how it is going to look like:

Background & Motivation

The Go by Example website is an excellent resource for learning Go through annotated example programs. However, reading online can be inconvenient, and the site doesn't provide a downloadable format for offline reading.

This tool solves that problem by:

• Automatically fetching all examples from the Go by Example repository
• Converting them to a single, well-formatted PDF e-book
• Adding navigation bookmarks and a table of contents for easy browsing
• Including proper attribution to the original source

The generated e-book is perfect for offline study, reference, or printing.

How to Build

Requirements:

• Go 1.24.4 or later
• Internet connection

Build steps:

# Clone the repository
git clone <repository-url>
cd go-by-example-book

# Install dependencies
go mod tidy

# Build the executable
go build

How to Use

Run the generator:

# Option 1: Run directly
go run main.go

# Option 2: Use the built executable
./go-by-example-book

What happens:

1. Downloads all Go examples from GitHub (first run takes several minutes)
2. Converts each example to PDF format
3. Creates a combined e-book with navigation bookmarks
4. Cleans up temporary files

Smart caching: Subsequent runs are much faster as the tool skips already downloaded examples.

Results & Files

Main output:

• go-by-example-generated-ebook.pdf - Complete e-book with all examples, table of contents, and navigation bookmarks

Files directory (files/):

• Individual PDF files for each example (e.g., hello_world.pdf, functions.pdf)
• Downloaded assets (CSS, JS, images) from the original site
• Temporary HTML files used during generation

Navigation features:

• PDF bookmarks: Use your PDF viewer's bookmark panel to jump between examples
• Table of contents: Clickable page numbers for direct navigation
• Introduction page: Contains attribution and usage instructions

Attribution included: The e-book properly credits the original Go by Example site and includes information about this generator tool.

Project Structure

go-by-example-book/
├── main.go                    # Main orchestration
├── internal/
│   ├── github/               # GitHub API & example fetching
│   ├── htmlpdf/              # HTML/PDF processing & bookmarks
│   └── naming/               # Filename processing
└── README.md

Dependencies

• github.com/go-rod/rod - Headless browser for HTML→PDF conversion
• github.com/pdfcpu/pdfcpu - PDF processing and merging

License

Open source. Free to modify and distribute.