author | Nishanth Amuluru <nishanth@fossee.in> |
Sat, 08 Jan 2011 22:20:41 +0530 | |
changeset 94 | 385702a0bbde |
parent 69 | c6bca38c1cbf |
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=========================== |
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Outputting PDFs with Django |
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=========================== |
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This document explains how to output PDF files dynamically using Django views. |
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This is made possible by the excellent, open-source ReportLab_ Python PDF |
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library. |
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The advantage of generating PDF files dynamically is that you can create |
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customized PDFs for different purposes -- say, for different users or different |
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pieces of content. |
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For example, Django was used at kusports.com_ to generate customized, |
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printer-friendly NCAA tournament brackets, as PDF files, for people |
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participating in a March Madness contest. |
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.. _ReportLab: http://www.reportlab.org/oss/rl-toolkit/ |
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.. _kusports.com: http://www.kusports.com/ |
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Install ReportLab |
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================= |
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Download and install the ReportLab library from http://www.reportlab.org/oss/rl-toolkit/download/. |
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The `user guide`_ (not coincidentally, a PDF file) explains how to install it. |
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Test your installation by importing it in the Python interactive interpreter:: |
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>>> import reportlab |
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If that command doesn't raise any errors, the installation worked. |
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.. _user guide: http://www.reportlab.com/docs/reportlab-userguide.pdf |
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Write your view |
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=============== |
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The key to generating PDFs dynamically with Django is that the ReportLab API |
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acts on file-like objects, and Django's :class:`~django.http.HttpResponse` |
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objects are file-like objects. |
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Here's a "Hello World" example:: |
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from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas |
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from django.http import HttpResponse |
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def some_view(request): |
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# Create the HttpResponse object with the appropriate PDF headers. |
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response = HttpResponse(mimetype='application/pdf') |
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response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=somefilename.pdf' |
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# Create the PDF object, using the response object as its "file." |
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p = canvas.Canvas(response) |
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# Draw things on the PDF. Here's where the PDF generation happens. |
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# See the ReportLab documentation for the full list of functionality. |
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p.drawString(100, 100, "Hello world.") |
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# Close the PDF object cleanly, and we're done. |
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p.showPage() |
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p.save() |
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return response |
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The code and comments should be self-explanatory, but a few things deserve a |
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mention: |
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* The response gets a special MIME type, ``application/pdf``. This tells |
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browsers that the document is a PDF file, rather than an HTML file. If |
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you leave this off, browsers will probably interpret the output as HTML, |
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which would result in ugly, scary gobbledygook in the browser window. |
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* The response gets an additional ``Content-Disposition`` header, which |
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contains the name of the PDF file. This filename is arbitrary: Call it |
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whatever you want. It'll be used by browsers in the "Save as..." |
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dialogue, etc. |
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* The ``Content-Disposition`` header starts with ``'attachment; '`` in this |
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example. This forces Web browsers to pop-up a dialog box |
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prompting/confirming how to handle the document even if a default is set |
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on the machine. If you leave off ``'attachment;'``, browsers will handle |
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the PDF using whatever program/plugin they've been configured to use for |
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PDFs. Here's what that code would look like:: |
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response['Content-Disposition'] = 'filename=somefilename.pdf' |
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* Hooking into the ReportLab API is easy: Just pass ``response`` as the |
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first argument to ``canvas.Canvas``. The ``Canvas`` class expects a |
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file-like object, and :class:`~django.http.HttpResponse` objects fit the |
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bill. |
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* Note that all subsequent PDF-generation methods are called on the PDF |
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object (in this case, ``p``) -- not on ``response``. |
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* Finally, it's important to call ``showPage()`` and ``save()`` on the PDF |
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file. |
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Complex PDFs |
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============ |
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If you're creating a complex PDF document with ReportLab, consider using the |
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cStringIO_ library as a temporary holding place for your PDF file. The cStringIO |
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library provides a file-like object interface that is particularly efficient. |
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Here's the above "Hello World" example rewritten to use ``cStringIO``:: |
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# Fall back to StringIO in environments where cStringIO is not available |
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try: |
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from cStringIO import StringIO |
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except ImportError: |
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from StringIO import StringIO |
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from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas |
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from django.http import HttpResponse |
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def some_view(request): |
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# Create the HttpResponse object with the appropriate PDF headers. |
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response = HttpResponse(mimetype='application/pdf') |
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response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=somefilename.pdf' |
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buffer = StringIO() |
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# Create the PDF object, using the StringIO object as its "file." |
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p = canvas.Canvas(buffer) |
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# Draw things on the PDF. Here's where the PDF generation happens. |
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# See the ReportLab documentation for the full list of functionality. |
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p.drawString(100, 100, "Hello world.") |
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# Close the PDF object cleanly. |
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p.showPage() |
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p.save() |
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# Get the value of the StringIO buffer and write it to the response. |
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pdf = buffer.getvalue() |
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buffer.close() |
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response.write(pdf) |
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return response |
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.. _cStringIO: http://docs.python.org/library/stringio.html#module-cStringIO |
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Further resources |
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================= |
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* PDFlib_ is another PDF-generation library that has Python bindings. To |
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use it with Django, just use the same concepts explained in this article. |
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* `Pisa XHTML2PDF`_ is yet another PDF-generation library. Pisa ships with |
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an example of how to integrate Pisa with Django. |
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* HTMLdoc_ is a command-line script that can convert HTML to PDF. It |
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doesn't have a Python interface, but you can escape out to the shell |
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using ``system`` or ``popen`` and retrieve the output in Python. |
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.. _PDFlib: http://www.pdflib.org/ |
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.. _`Pisa XHTML2PDF`: http://www.xhtml2pdf.com/ |
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.. _HTMLdoc: http://www.htmldoc.org/ |
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|
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Other formats |
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============= |
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Notice that there isn't a lot in these examples that's PDF-specific -- just the |
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bits using ``reportlab``. You can use a similar technique to generate any |
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arbitrary format that you can find a Python library for. Also see |
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:doc:`/howto/outputting-csv` for another example and some techniques you can use |
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when generated text-based formats. |