Ask HN: Best Slide API?

7 points by itslogotime 6y ago ↗ HN

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

11 comments

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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

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?

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

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.

would you buy it if I build it?