parallax/jsPDF · error · Error

Type of text must be string or Array. "{text}" is not recogn

Error message

Type of text must be string or Array. "{text}" is not recognized.

What it means

Thrown by jsPDF.text when the text argument is neither a string nor an array of strings/string-pairs. The code sets textIsOfTypeString by checking that a plain string was given, or that an array's elements are all strings or [string, ...] arrays. If neither shape matches, the unrecognized value is rejected.

Source

Thrown at src/jspdf.js:3654

      var sa = text.concat();
      da = [];
      var len = sa.length;
      var curDa;
      //we do array.join('text that must not be PDFescaped")
      //thus, pdfEscape each component separately
      while (len--) {
        curDa = sa.shift();
        if (
          typeof curDa !== "string" ||
          (Array.isArray(curDa) && typeof curDa[0] !== "string")
        ) {
          tmpTextIsOfTypeString = false;
        }
      }
      textIsOfTypeString = tmpTextIsOfTypeString;
    }
    if (textIsOfTypeString === false) {
      throw new Error(
        'Type of text must be string or Array. "' +
          text +
          '" is not recognized.'
      );
    }

    //If there are any newlines in text, we assume
    //the user wanted to print multiple lines, so break the
    //text up into an array. If the text is already an array,
    //we assume the user knows what they are doing.
    //Convert text into an array anyway to simplify
    //later code.

    if (typeof text === "string") {
      if (text.match(/[\r?\n]/)) {
        text = text.split(/\r\n|\r|\n/g);
      } else {
        text = [text];

View on GitHub (pinned to a3930ce03a)

Solutions

1. Coerce scalar values to strings before passing: String(value) or template literals.
2. For multi-line text, pass an array of strings: ['line1', 'line2'].
3. If the array contains [string, x, y] entries, keep the first element of each a string.

Example fix

// before
pdf.text(record.age, x, y); // age is a number -> not recognized
// after
pdf.text(String(record.age), x, y);

function normalizeText(t) {
  if (typeof t === 'string') return t;
  if (Array.isArray(t)) return t.map(function (e) { return typeof e === 'string' ? e : (Array.isArray(e) ? [String(e[0]), e[1], e[2]] : String(e)); });
  return String(t);
}
pdf.text(normalizeText(text), x, y);

function isRecognizedText(t) {
  if (typeof t === 'string') return true;
  if (Array.isArray(t)) return t.every(function (e) { return typeof e === 'string' || (Array.isArray(e) && typeof e[0] === 'string'); });
  return false;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Passing a number, object, boolean, or a mixed array (e.g. [123, 'b']) to text(). Also passing a single non-string scalar where a string is expected.

Common situations: Forgetting to stringify a numeric field; passing a Date or object directly; mixing numbers into a multi-line text array; reading untyped JSON values into text() without coercion.

Related errors

• Invalid arguments passed to jsPDF.text
• Unrecognized alignment option, use "left", "center", "right"
• Invalid arguments passed to jsPDF.lines
• Invalid arguments passed to jsPDF.setLineDash
• Invalid argument passed to jsPDF.setCharSpace

AI-assisted analysis of parallax/jsPDF@a3930ce03a (2026-08-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/46cd73622b5572e0. Report an issue: GitHub.