Django and Reportlab Questions

Question

I wrote this little Django view for returning pdf.

@login_required def code_view(request,myid): try: deal = Deal.objects.get(id=myid) except: raise Http404 header = deal.header code = deal.code response = HttpResponse(mimetype='application/pdf') response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=code.pdf' p = canvas.Canvas(response) p.drawString(10, 800, header) p.drawString(10, 700, code) p.showPage() p.save() return response 

And my questions are:

• Utf-8 characters are not displayed correctly in the pdf file.
• How to enable image?
• How can I include a very simple html, for example:

.

 <ul> <li>List One</li> <li>List Two</li> <li>List Three</li> </ul> 

Answer 1

You must go to the next level and use DocTemplates. The images are pretty lightweight, but using bullets is really hard - you need to define styles and more!

I use a set of classes as shown below:

 # -*- coding: utf-8 -*- from django.utils.encoding import smart_str from reportlab.lib.colors import Color from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import A4 from reportlab.lib.styles import StyleSheet1, ParagraphStyle from reportlab.lib.units import cm from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas from reportlab.platypus.doctemplate import BaseDocTemplate, PageTemplate, \ _doNothing from reportlab.platypus.frames import Frame from reportlab.platypus.paragraph import Paragraph import copy import re from reportlab.platypus.flowables import KeepTogether, Image, PageBreak from htmlentitydefs import name2codepoint from atom.http_core import HttpResponse import tempfile def htmlentitydecode(s): return re.sub('&(%s);' % '|'.join(name2codepoint), lambda m: smart_str(unichr(name2codepoint[m.group(1)])), s) PS = ParagraphStyle stylesheet = StyleSheet1() stylesheet.add(PS(name='Normal', leading=15)) stylesheet.add(PS(name='Bullet', parent=stylesheet['Normal'], bulletFontName = 'Symbol', bulletIndent = 0, bulletFontSize = 13, bulletColor = Color(0.93,0,0), bulletOffsetY = -1.5, leftIndent = 15.8, firstLineIndent = 0, ), alias='bu') stylesheet.add(PS(name='Heading1', parent=stylesheet['Normal'], fontSize=18, spaceAfter=23.5), alias='h1') stylesheet.add(PS(name='Heading2', parent=stylesheet['Normal'], fontSize=14, spaceAfter=4), alias='h2') stylesheet.add(PS(name='Heading3', parent=stylesheet['Normal'], textColor=Color(0.93,0,0) ), alias='h3') stylesheet.add(PS(name='Heading4', parent=stylesheet['Heading3'], textColor='black'), alias='h4') BulletStyle = copy.deepcopy(stylesheet["Bullet"]) H1Style = copy.deepcopy(stylesheet["Heading1"]) H2Style = copy.deepcopy(stylesheet["Heading2"]) H3Style = copy.deepcopy(stylesheet["Heading3"]) H4Style = copy.deepcopy(stylesheet["Heading4"]) NormalStyle = copy.deepcopy(stylesheet["Normal"]) top_margin = A4[1] - 1.22*cm bottom_margin = 1.5*cm left_margin = 2.8*cm frame_width = 17.02*cm right_margin = left_margin + frame_width frame_height = 22.7*cm letter_top_margin = 25.0*cm letter_bottom_margin = 3.0*cm letter_left_margin = 2.5*cm letter_right_margin = A4[0] - 2.5*cm letter_frame_width = A4[0] - 5.0*cm letter_frame_height = letter_top_margin - letter_bottom_margin class LetterTemplate(BaseDocTemplate): _invalidInitArgs = ('pageTemplates',) def handle_pageBegin(self): self._handle_pageBegin() self._handle_nextPageTemplate('First') def build(self, flowables, onFirstPage=_doNothing, canvasmaker=canvas.Canvas): self._calc() frameT = Frame(letter_left_margin, letter_bottom_margin, letter_frame_width, letter_frame_height, leftPadding=0, bottomPadding=0, rightPadding=0, topPadding=0, id='normal') self.addPageTemplates([PageTemplate(id='First',frames=frameT, onPage=onFirstPage, pagesize=self.pagesize)]) if onFirstPage is _doNothing and hasattr(self,'onFirstPage'): self.pageTemplates[0].beforeDrawPage = self.onFirstPage BaseDocTemplate.build(self, flowables, canvasmaker=canvasmaker) class PdfA4Letter(object): def __init__(self, filename): self.title = filename self._keep_together = False self.elements = [] self._keep_together_elements = [] self.doc = LetterTemplate(filename,showBoundary=False) self.elements = [] def _process_text(self, txt): text_elems = [] # avoid us from user added html. txt = txt.replace('&lt;','&lang;').replace('&gt;','&rang;') txt = htmlentitydecode(smart_str(txt).replace('<p>', '').replace('</p>', '<br />')) # @todo: in some case the reegxp does not work -> hack txt = txt.replace('target="_blank"', '') # process text for part in re.split('<ul>|</ul>|<ol>|</ol>', txt): part = part.strip() if part.count('<li>') > 0: for item in re.split('<li>|</li>', part): item = item.strip() if len(item) > 0: text_elems.append(Paragraph(item, BulletStyle, bulletText=u'•')) else: text_elems.append(Paragraph(part, NormalStyle)) return text_elems def _store_flowable(self, flowable): if self._keep_together == False: self.elements.append(flowable) else: self._keep_together_elements.append(flowable) def start_keep_together(self): self.end_keep_together() self._keep_together = True def end_keep_together(self): self._keep_together = False if len(self._keep_together_elements) > 0: e = self._keep_together_elements self.elements.append(KeepTogether(e)) self._keep_together_elements = [] def newPage(self): self._store_flowable(PageBreak()) def blankline(self, cnt=1): self.text(cnt*'<br/>') def text(self, txt): for e in self._process_text(txt): self._store_flowable(e) def image(self, name, width, height, halign='CENTER'): im = Image(name, width=width, height=height) im.hAlign = halign self._store_flowable(im) def h1(self, txt, add_to_toc=True): self.newPage() self._store_flowable(Paragraph(txt, H1Style)) def h2(self, txt, add_to_toc=True): self._store_flowable(Paragraph(txt, H2Style)) def h3(self, txt, add_to_toc=False): self._store_flowable(Paragraph(txt, H3Style)) def h4(self, txt, add_to_toc=False): self._store_flowable(Paragraph(txt, H4Style)) def _drawPage(self, canvas, doc): canvas.setSubject('Letter Subject') canvas.setTitle('Letter Title') canvas.setAuthor('Me') def build(self): # flush elems self.end_keep_together() self.doc.build(self.elements, self._drawPage) 

You can then handle the creation of the PDF in your view, for example:

 def view(request): file = tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile() e = PdfA4Letter(file.name) ref = '/absolute/path/to/image.png' e.image(ref, width=frame_width, height=10*cm) e.h1((u'Über Mich')) e.h3('Next header') t = """ ascasc<br /> ascascasc<br /> <ul> <li>sdv1</li> <li>sdv2</li> <li>sdv3</li> </ul> ascasc<br /> ascasc<br /> """ e.text(t) e.blankline(2) e.end_keep_together() e.build() response = HttpResponse(mimetype='application/pdf') response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=gugus.pdf' response.write(file.read()) file.close() return response 

Answer 2

Reportlab can handle some basic HTML formatting ( <b> , <i> ), not sure if it can do lists. You can use pisa to convert HTML to PDF. Then you can use the <img> to include the image (you need to set PIL to use the image)