[python] Render HTML to PDF in Django site

For my django powered site, I am looking for an easy solution to convert dynamic html pages to pdf.

Pages include HTML and charts from Google visualization API (which is javascript based, yet including those graphs is a must).

You can use iReport editor to define the layout, and publish the report in jasper reports server. After publish you can invoke the rest api to get the results.

Here is the test of the functionality:

from django.test import TestCase
from x_reports_jasper.models import JasperServerClient

"""
    to try integraction with jasper server through rest
"""
class TestJasperServerClient(TestCase):

    # define required objects for tests
    def setUp(self):

        # load the connection to remote server
        try:

            self.j_url = "http://127.0.0.1:8080/jasperserver"
            self.j_user = "jasperadmin"
            self.j_pass = "jasperadmin"

            self.client = JasperServerClient.create_client(self.j_url,self.j_user,self.j_pass)

        except Exception, e:
            # if errors could not execute test given prerrequisites
            raise

    # test exception when server data is invalid
    def test_login_to_invalid_address_should_raise(self):
        self.assertRaises(Exception,JasperServerClient.create_client, "http://127.0.0.1:9090/jasperserver",self.j_user,self.j_pass)

    # test execute existent report in server
    def test_get_report(self):

        r_resource_path = "/reports/<PathToPublishedReport>"
        r_format = "pdf"
        r_params = {'PARAM_TO_REPORT':"1",}

        #resource_meta = client.load_resource_metadata( rep_resource_path )

        [uuid,out_mime,out_data] = self.client.generate_report(r_resource_path,r_format,r_params)
        self.assertIsNotNone(uuid)

And here is an example of the invocation implementation:

from django.db import models
import requests
import sys
from xml.etree import ElementTree
import logging 

# module logger definition
logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)

# Create your models here.
class JasperServerClient(models.Manager):

    def __handle_exception(self, exception_root, exception_id, exec_info ):
        type, value, traceback = exec_info
        raise JasperServerClientError(exception_root, exception_id), None, traceback

    # 01: REPORT-METADATA 
    #   get resource description to generate the report
    def __handle_report_metadata(self, rep_resourcepath):

        l_path_base_resource = "/rest/resource"
        l_path = self.j_url + l_path_base_resource
        logger.info( "metadata (begin) [path=%s%s]"  %( l_path ,rep_resourcepath) )

        resource_response = None
        try:
            resource_response = requests.get( "%s%s" %( l_path ,rep_resourcepath) , cookies = self.login_response.cookies)

        except Exception, e:
            self.__handle_exception(e, "REPORT_METADATA:CALL_ERROR", sys.exc_info())

        resource_response_dom = None
        try:
            # parse to dom and set parameters
            logger.debug( " - response [data=%s]"  %( resource_response.text) )
            resource_response_dom = ElementTree.fromstring(resource_response.text)

            datum = "" 
            for node in resource_response_dom.getiterator():
                datum = "%s<br />%s - %s" % (datum, node.tag, node.text)
            logger.debug( " - response [xml=%s]"  %( datum ) )

            #
            self.resource_response_payload= resource_response.text
            logger.info( "metadata (end) ")
        except Exception, e:
            logger.error( "metadata (error) [%s]" % (e))
            self.__handle_exception(e, "REPORT_METADATA:PARSE_ERROR", sys.exc_info())


    # 02: REPORT-PARAMS 
    def __add_report_params(self, metadata_text, params ):
        if(type(params) != dict):
            raise TypeError("Invalid parameters to report")
        else:
            logger.info( "add-params (begin) []" )
            #copy parameters
            l_params = {}
            for k,v in params.items():
                l_params[k]=v
            # get the payload metadata
            metadata_dom = ElementTree.fromstring(metadata_text)
            # add attributes to payload metadata
            root = metadata_dom #('report'):

            for k,v in l_params.items():
                param_dom_element = ElementTree.Element('parameter')
                param_dom_element.attrib["name"] = k
                param_dom_element.text = v
                root.append(param_dom_element)

            #
            metadata_modified_text =ElementTree.tostring(metadata_dom, encoding='utf8', method='xml')
            logger.info( "add-params (end) [payload-xml=%s]" %( metadata_modified_text )  )
            return metadata_modified_text



    # 03: REPORT-REQUEST-CALL 
    #   call to generate the report
    def __handle_report_request(self, rep_resourcepath, rep_format, rep_params):

        # add parameters
        self.resource_response_payload = self.__add_report_params(self.resource_response_payload,rep_params)

        # send report request

        l_path_base_genreport = "/rest/report"
        l_path = self.j_url + l_path_base_genreport
        logger.info( "report-request (begin) [path=%s%s]"  %( l_path ,rep_resourcepath) )

        genreport_response = None
        try:
            genreport_response = requests.put( "%s%s?RUN_OUTPUT_FORMAT=%s" %(l_path,rep_resourcepath,rep_format),data=self.resource_response_payload, cookies = self.login_response.cookies )
            logger.info( " - send-operation-result [value=%s]"  %( genreport_response.text) )
        except Exception,e:
            self.__handle_exception(e, "REPORT_REQUEST:CALL_ERROR", sys.exc_info())


        # parse the uuid of the requested report
        genreport_response_dom = None

        try:
            genreport_response_dom = ElementTree.fromstring(genreport_response.text)

            for node in genreport_response_dom.findall("uuid"):
                datum = "%s" % (node.text)

            genreport_uuid = datum      

            for node in genreport_response_dom.findall("file/[@type]"):
                datum = "%s" % (node.text)
            genreport_mime = datum

            logger.info( "report-request (end) [uuid=%s,mime=%s]"  %( genreport_uuid, genreport_mime) )

            return [genreport_uuid,genreport_mime]
        except Exception,e:
            self.__handle_exception(e, "REPORT_REQUEST:PARSE_ERROR", sys.exc_info())

    # 04: REPORT-RETRIEVE RESULTS 
    def __handle_report_reply(self, genreport_uuid ):


        l_path_base_getresult = "/rest/report"
        l_path = self.j_url + l_path_base_getresult 
        logger.info( "report-reply (begin) [uuid=%s,path=%s]"  %( genreport_uuid,l_path) )

        getresult_response = requests.get( "%s%s/%s?file=report" %(self.j_url,l_path_base_getresult,genreport_uuid),data=self.resource_response_payload, cookies = self.login_response.cookies )
        l_result_header_mime =getresult_response.headers['Content-Type']

        logger.info( "report-reply (end) [uuid=%s,mime=%s]"  %( genreport_uuid, l_result_header_mime) )
        return [l_result_header_mime, getresult_response.content]

    # public methods ---------------------------------------    

    # tries the authentication with jasperserver throug rest
    def login(self, j_url, j_user,j_pass):
        self.j_url= j_url

        l_path_base_auth = "/rest/login"
        l_path = self.j_url + l_path_base_auth

        logger.info( "login (begin) [path=%s]"  %( l_path) )

        try:
            self.login_response = requests.post(l_path , params = {
                    'j_username':j_user,
                    'j_password':j_pass
                })                  

            if( requests.codes.ok != self.login_response.status_code ):
                self.login_response.raise_for_status()

            logger.info( "login (end)" )
            return True
            # see http://blog.ianbicking.org/2007/09/12/re-raising-exceptions/

        except Exception, e:
            logger.error("login (error) [e=%s]" % e )
            self.__handle_exception(e, "LOGIN:CALL_ERROR",sys.exc_info())
            #raise

    def generate_report(self, rep_resourcepath,rep_format,rep_params):
        self.__handle_report_metadata(rep_resourcepath)
        [uuid,mime] = self.__handle_report_request(rep_resourcepath, rep_format,rep_params)
        # TODO: how to handle async?
        [out_mime,out_data] = self.__handle_report_reply(uuid)
        return [uuid,out_mime,out_data]

    @staticmethod
    def create_client(j_url, j_user, j_pass):
        client = JasperServerClient()
        login_res = client.login( j_url, j_user, j_pass )
        return client


class JasperServerClientError(Exception):

    def __init__(self,exception_root,reason_id,reason_message=None):
        super(JasperServerClientError, self).__init__(str(reason_message))
        self.code = reason_id 
        self.description = str(exception_root) + " " + str(reason_message)
    def __str__(self):
        return self.code + " " + self.description

I get the code to generate the PDF from html template :

    import os

    from weasyprint import HTML

    from django.template import Template, Context
    from django.http import HttpResponse 


    def generate_pdf(self, report_id):

            # Render HTML into memory and get the template firstly
            template_file_loc = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), os.pardir, 'templates', 'the_template_pdf_generator.html')
            template_contents = read_all_as_str(template_file_loc)
            render_template = Template(template_contents)

            #rendering_map is the dict for params in the template 
            render_definition = Context(rendering_map)
            render_output = render_template.render(render_definition)

            # Using Rendered HTML to generate PDF
            response = HttpResponse(content_type='application/pdf')
            response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=%s-%s-%s.pdf' % \
                                              ('topic-test','topic-test', '2018-05-04')
            # Generate PDF
            pdf_doc = HTML(string=render_output).render()
            pdf_doc.pages[0].height = pdf_doc.pages[0]._page_box.children[0].children[
                0].height  # Make PDF file as single page file 
            pdf_doc.write_pdf(response)
            return response

    def read_all_as_str(self, file_loc, read_method='r'):
        if file_exists(file_loc):
            handler = open(file_loc, read_method)
            contents = handler.read()
            handler.close()
            return contents
        else:
            return 'file not exist'  

I just whipped this up for CBV. Not used in production but generates a PDF for me. Probably needs work for the error reporting side of things but does the trick so far.

import StringIO
from cgi import escape
from xhtml2pdf import pisa
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.template.response import TemplateResponse
from django.views.generic import TemplateView

class PDFTemplateResponse(TemplateResponse):

    def generate_pdf(self, retval):

        html = self.content

        result = StringIO.StringIO()
        rendering = pisa.pisaDocument(StringIO.StringIO(html.encode("ISO-8859-1")), result)

        if rendering.err:
            return HttpResponse('We had some errors<pre>%s</pre>' % escape(html))
        else:
            self.content = result.getvalue()

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(PDFTemplateResponse, self).__init__(*args, mimetype='application/pdf', **kwargs)
        self.add_post_render_callback(self.generate_pdf)


class PDFTemplateView(TemplateView):
    response_class = PDFTemplateResponse

Used like:

class MyPdfView(PDFTemplateView):
    template_name = 'things/pdf.html'

After trying to get this to work for too many hours, I finally found this: https://github.com/vierno/django-xhtml2pdf

It's a fork of https://github.com/chrisglass/django-xhtml2pdf that provides a mixin for a generic class-based view. I used it like this:

    # views.py
    from django_xhtml2pdf.views import PdfMixin
    class GroupPDFGenerate(PdfMixin, DetailView):
        model = PeerGroupSignIn
        template_name = 'groups/pdf.html'

    # templates/groups/pdf.html
    <html>
    <style>
    @page { your xhtml2pdf pisa PDF parameters }
    </style>
    </head>
    <body>
        <div id="header_content"> (this is defined in the style section)
            <h1>{{ peergroupsignin.this_group_title }}</h1>
            ...

Use the model name you defined in your view in all lowercase when populating the template fields. Because its a GCBV, you can just call it as '.as_view' in your urls.py:

    # urls.py (using url namespaces defined in the main urls.py file)
    url(
        regex=r"^(?P<pk>\d+)/generate_pdf/$",
        view=views.GroupPDFGenerate.as_view(),
        name="generate_pdf",
       ),

Try wkhtmltopdf with either one of the following wrappers

django-wkhtmltopdf or python-pdfkit

This worked great for me,supports javascript and css or anything for that matter which a webkit browser supports.

For more detailed tutorial please see this blog post

If you have context data along with css and js in your html template. Than you have good option to use pdfjs.

In your code you can use like this.

from django.template.loader import get_template
import pdfkit
from django.conf import settings

context={....}
template = get_template('reports/products.html')
html_string = template.render(context)
pdfkit.from_string(html_string, os.path.join(settings.BASE_DIR, "media", 'products_report-%s.pdf'%(id)))

In your HTML you can link extranal or internal css and js, it will generate best quality of pdf.

https://github.com/nigma/django-easy-pdf

Template:

{% extends "easy_pdf/base.html" %}

{% block content %}
    <div id="content">
        <h1>Hi there!</h1>
    </div>
{% endblock %}

View:

from easy_pdf.views import PDFTemplateView

class HelloPDFView(PDFTemplateView):
    template_name = "hello.html"

If you want to use django-easy-pdf on Python 3 check the solution suggested here.