Question about how to tackle a particular SaaS idea
@eliquid... imagine you have a printable design that you want to sell as a downloadable PDF, but you want your customers to be able to customize the design before placing an order.
For simplicity sake, let's use the example of a license plate graphic, where the customer can choose up to 7 characters to make the license plate say whatever they want. The rest of the license place graphic remains static. The only thing that changes are the license plate letters. The font is predetermined by the software. Once the customer chooses the wording, they submit it, place an order, and a PDF gets generated that they can then download immediately. They can then take that PDF and use it to get it printed on whatever medium they want - of course, I would provide some suggestions on what that design would work well on (t-shirts, metal signs, coffee mugs, etc, with links to those services).
This would essentially just be a PDF editing software using web form fields to collect the information to add to the PDF, then generate the PDF, maybe with the option to generate an SVG or PNG. It would similar to the QR code generators that are out there, or simplified versions of the on-demand printing solutions like Spreadshirt, CafePress, and various others out there. It would need the ability to store and use specified fonts and specified color codes. And the ability to edit multiple text locations in some situations.
With all of that said, where would you start? Could something like this be built with SaaS builder tools? If any come to mind that you think would work for this, point me in that direction and I'll start researching.
I put your request into my Systems Design custom GPT and noodled with the code a little bit and landed on this as a really rough prototype for you. it uses tailwind, react, and jsPDF
```jsx
import React, { useState, useRef } from 'react';
import 'tailwindcss/tailwind.css';
import { jsPDF } from "jspdf";
import html2canvas from 'html2canvas';
function App() {
const [text, setText] = useState("");
const licensePlateRef = useRef(null);
const handleChange = (e) => {
setText(e.target.value.toUpperCase().slice(0, 7)); // Uppercase, max 7 chars
};
const handleSubmit = async () => {
// Generate PDF with license plate design
const pdf = new jsPDF();
if (licensePlateRef.current) {
const canvas = await html2canvas(licensePlateRef.current);
const imgData = canvas.toDataURL('image/png');
pdf.addImage(imgData, 'PNG', 10, 10);
}
pdf.save("license_plate_design.pdf");
};
const ph = "Enter up to 7 characters"
return (
<div className="flex flex-col items-center justify-center min-h-screen bg-gray-100">
<div className="p-4 bg-white rounded shadow-md w-64">
<h1 className="text-2xl mb-4">Customize Your License Plate</h1>
<input
type="text"
value={text}
onChange={handleChange}
placeholder={ph}
className="mb-4 p-2 w-full border border-gray-300 rounded"
/>
<button
onClick={handleSubmit}
className="w-full p-2 bg-blue-500 text-white rounded"
>
Generate Design
</button>
</div>
{/* license plate below */}
<div ref={licensePlateRef} className="mt-8 p-4 bg-gray-200 rounded shadow-md w-64 text-center text-xl font-bold flex items-center justify-center">
<div className="border-4 border-black rounded-lg w-full">
<div className="bg-yellow-500 text-black rounded-lg p-2">
{text ? text : "Your License Plate"}
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
);
}
export default App;
```