Wicked_PDF does not transfer HTML and CSS resources hosted through Asset Sync in production

Question

I have a problem rendering PDF files using Wicked_PDF. I host all the resources of my resource using Amazon S3 and CloudFront, and everything is created perfectly during development; however, in HTML products and CSS attributes are not displayed in the generated PDF file.

I am running Rails 3.2.11, Ruby 1.9.3p327, on MAC OSX 10.8.2, wkhtmltopdf 0.9.9 and the current versions of Wicked_PDF and wkhtmltopdf-heroku.

Here is all the necessary information:

Heroku Magazines:

2013-04-21T14:13:19.482011+00:00 app[web.1]: Completed 302 Found in 212ms (ActiveRecord: 205.6ms) 2013-04-21T14:13:19.584108+00:00 app[web.1]: Started GET "/office/download/7" for ip_address at 2013-04-21 14:13:19 +0000 2013-04-21T14:13:21.551581+00:00 app[web.1]: Processing by OfficesController#show_pdf as HTML 2013-04-21T14:13:21.551581+00:00 app[web.1]: ***************WICKED*************** 2013-04-21T14:13:21.551581+00:00 app[web.1]: Parameters: {"office_id"=>"7"} 2013-04-21T14:13:21.551581+00:00 app[web.1]: Rendered appointments/forms/_office.pdf.html.erb within layouts/pdf.html (13.6ms) 2013-04-21T14:13:21.551581+00:00 app[web.1]: Rendered text template (0.0ms) 2013-04-21T14:13:21.551581+00:00 app[web.1]: Sent data Office.pdf (42.2ms) 2013-04-21T14:13:21.551581+00:00 app[web.1]: Completed 200 OK in 1961ms (Views: 41.9ms | ActiveRecord: 7.8ms) 2013-04-21T14:13:21.554211+00:00 heroku[router]: at=info method=GET path=/office/download/7 host=www.foobar.com fwd="ip_address" dyno=web.1 connect=1ms service=1971ms status=200 bytes=22019 

Routes

 # => Route that generates the PDF get "/office/download/:office_id" => 'offices#show_pdf' 

Controller:

 # => app/controllers/offices_controller.rb def show_pdf @office = Office.find_by_id(params[:office_id]) abrv = @office.abrv partial = "appointments/forms/_#{abrv}" @format = "pdf" respond_to do |format| format.pdf do render :pdf => "#{@office.name}", :template => "#{partial}.pdf.html.erb", :layout => "pdf.html", :page_size => "A4", :encoding => "UTF-8", :show_as_html => params[:debug].present? end end end 

View:

 # => app/views/offices/index <div> # List of all offices </div> # PDF partials for each office <%= render 'appointments/forms/office.pdf.html.erb' %> <%= render 'appointments/forms/office_1.pdf.html.erb' %> ... 

PDF template:

 # => app/views/appointments/forms/_office.pdf.html.erb: <% if @format != 'pdf' %> <%= stylesheet_link_tag 'office' # => .css.scss.erb %> <% else %> <%= wicked_pdf_stylesheet_link_tag 'office' # => .css.scss.erb %> <% end %> <div class="pdf_styling"> <p>Bar</p> </div> 

CSS

 # => app/assets/stylesheets/office.css.scss.erb .pdf_styling { background-image: url('https://s3.amazonaws.com/foo/assets/pdf_background_image.jpg'); width: 100%; height: 100%; p { position: absolute; left: 100px; right: 100px; } } 

Wicked_PDF Initializer:

 # => config/initializers/wicked_pdf.rb WICKED_PDF = { :wkhtmltopdf => (Rails.env.test? || Rails.env.development? ? '/usr/local/bin/wkhtmltopdf' : Rails.root.join('bin', 'wkhtmltopdf-amd64').to_s), :exe_path => (Rails.env.test? || Rails.env.development? ? '/usr/local/bin/ ' : Rails.root.join('vendor','bin', 'wkhtmltopdf-amd64').to_s) } 

Gemfile:

 # PDF Gem gem 'wicked_pdf' # PDF to HTML utility gem 'wkhtmltopdf-binary' # PDF on heroku group :production do gem "wkhtmltopdf-heroku", :git => 'git://github.com/camdez/wkhtmltopdf-heroku.git' gem 'thin' end # Asset Pipeline Optimization gem "asset_sync" 

Again, everything works fine in development, but I just get a blank PDF page in production. There are no errors inside the logs. Is this a potential problem with having too small speakers?

I admittedly n00b with all of this; forgive me. Thanks.

Answer 1

I had the same problems when deploying to production at Heroku.

Two possible areas for the address ... First of all, EVERY Javascript or CSS resource file should be specified as an absolute URL, and not just the one you specify in the template code. If you have JS / CSS files mentioned elsewhere, they should also be in absolute form. Because of this, you also need to see the pdf file.

Secondly (and this is what helped on Heroku), I had to specify each of my resources in config / application.rb as follows:

 config.assets.precompile += ['blueprint/screen.css', 'jquery.timepicker.css', 'pdf.css', 'jquery.ui.datepicker.js', 'pdf.js', 'jquery.autosize.js', 'jquery.timepicker.js'] 

I'm not sure why this second step was necessary, but nothing worked on Heroku without it: I have the same clean PDF file, without the errors you report, I even thought that everything works in development. My experience is that wkhtmltopdf fails silently if there are problems with resources. I wrote about the problem here , and also added an update to the WickedPDF README documentation, which may be useful.