Rails view as PDF... suggestions?

ruby-talk
1

Hi, everybody!

I am about to do some research tomorrow, but if any of you has an obvious answer, then that would help. I am looking to build PDFs from Rails views, and I'd like some guidance on how to go about it.

If this is not the right forum, feel free to forward me to a better one.

I want to put placeholders, both text and images, onto a template and end up with a PDF. I'm pretty open about how that all happens, so feel free to make wild suggestions. The only important constraint I can think of is that layout (meaning spacing) matters, so relying on a browser rendering HTML is probably not an option. The template will be a kind of background on which the placeholders will be laid out, and I imagine it's the template that will be the tricky part.

I have looked into PDF::Writer, but I'm not sure whether we'll need to draw the templates or not. If we get the template as a pre-rendered file (say PDF, RTF, whatever), then I'd like to be able to overlay the placeholders onto the template and merge.

So, any suggestions? Any questions for me? Any choice Google keywords you care to suggest? I could really use your help.

Take care.

···

--
J. B. (Joe) Rainsberger :: http://www.jbrains.ca
Your guide to software craftsmanship
JUnit Recipes: Practical Methods for Programmer Testing
2005 Gordon Pask Award for contribution Agile Software Practice

2

look at this too

   http://www.kitp.ucsb.edu/~paxton/tioga.html

depending on your needs it might fill them quite nicely

pdf::writer is nice too - i think they are taking quite different approaches
and fill different niches.

-a

···

On Thu, 16 Nov 2006, J. B. Rainsberger wrote:

Hi, everybody!

I am about to do some research tomorrow, but if any of you has an obvious answer, then that would help. I am looking to build PDFs from Rails views, and I'd like some guidance on how to go about it.

If this is not the right forum, feel free to forward me to a better one.

I want to put placeholders, both text and images, onto a template and end up with a PDF. I'm pretty open about how that all happens, so feel free to make wild suggestions. The only important constraint I can think of is that layout (meaning spacing) matters, so relying on a browser rendering HTML is probably not an option. The template will be a kind of background on which the placeholders will be laid out, and I imagine it's the template that will be the tricky part.

I have looked into PDF::Writer, but I'm not sure whether we'll need to draw the templates or not. If we get the template as a pre-rendered file (say PDF, RTF, whatever), then I'd like to be able to overlay the placeholders onto the template and merge.

So, any suggestions? Any questions for me? Any choice Google keywords you care to suggest? I could really use your help.

Take care.

--
my religion is very simple. my religion is kindness. -- the dalai lama

3

Hi,

I am about to do some research tomorrow, but if any of you has an
obvious answer, then that would help. I am looking to build PDFs from
Rails views, and I'd like some guidance on how to go about it.

I want to put placeholders, both text and images, onto a template and
end up with a PDF. I'm pretty open about how that all happens, so feel
free to make wild suggestions. The only important constraint I can think
of is that layout (meaning spacing) matters, so relying on a browser
rendering HTML is probably not an option. The template will be a kind of
background on which the placeholders will be laid out, and I imagine
it's the template that will be the tricky part.

My suggestion is the following:

  1. make a SVG for template with Illustrator, Inkscape and so on
  2. substitute placeholders in the SVG by ERB, Amrita and so on
  3. generate PDF from the substituted SVG.
      (See [ruby-talk:225127])

# You can't use PDF::Writer for this suggestion.

Thanks,

···

2006/11/16, J. B. Rainsberger <jbrains762@gmail.com>:
--
kou

4

J. B. Rainsberger wrote:

Hi, everybody!

I am about to do some research tomorrow, but if any of you has an obvious answer, then that would help. I am looking to build PDFs from Rails views, and I'd like some guidance on how to go about it.

If this is not the right forum, feel free to forward me to a better one.

I want to put placeholders, both text and images, onto a template and end up with a PDF. I'm pretty open about how that all happens, so feel free to make wild suggestions. The only important constraint I can think of is that layout (meaning spacing) matters, so relying on a browser rendering HTML is probably not an option. The template will be a kind of background on which the placeholders will be laid out, and I imagine it's the template that will be the tricky part.

I have looked into PDF::Writer, but I'm not sure whether we'll need to draw the templates or not. If we get the template as a pre-rendered file (say PDF, RTF, whatever), then I'd like to be able to overlay the placeholders onto the template and merge.

So, any suggestions? Any questions for me? Any choice Google keywords you care to suggest? I could really use your help.

This is just a follow-up. I found a neat tool online, from FyTek, called "PDF Meld" that can overlay a PDF onto a graphic, which is perfect for our purposes. We're now integrating its script into our Rails application, and if it works well, you'll see me write about it in detail. If not, your ideas are a tremendous backup plan.

Thanks again.

···

--
J. B. (Joe) Rainsberger :: http://www.jbrains.ca
Your guide to software craftsmanship
JUnit Recipes: Practical Methods for Programmer Testing
2005 Gordon Pask Award for contribution Agile Software Practice

5

PDF::Writer -- it kicks ass and it's easy to use.

http://www.artima.com/rubycs/articles/pdf_writer.html

require "pdf/writer"

      class HelloController < ApplicationController
        # ...
        def pdf
          _pdf = PDF::Writer.new
          _pdf.select_font "Times-Roman"
          _pdf.text "Hello, Ruby.", :font_size => 72, :justification => :center

          send_data _pdf.render, :filename => "hello.pdf",
                    :type => "application/pdf"
        end
        # ...
      end

the only problem with it is that you can't define templates and then
have PDF::Writer process them the same way you can process other
templates within Rails as views.

however, it sounds as if that's what your application needs, and I
think creating a templating facility for PDF::Writer would be your
best bet. if you create it, please open-source it! it'll make a useful
library stunningly useful.

(actually, I might be willing to help with that, I think it would be
very, very cool.)

···

On 11/15/06, Kouhei Sutou <kou@cozmixng.org> wrote:

Hi,

2006/11/16, J. B. Rainsberger <jbrains762@gmail.com>:

> I am about to do some research tomorrow, but if any of you has an
> obvious answer, then that would help. I am looking to build PDFs from
> Rails views, and I'd like some guidance on how to go about it.

> I want to put placeholders, both text and images, onto a template and
> end up with a PDF. I'm pretty open about how that all happens, so feel
> free to make wild suggestions. The only important constraint I can think
> of is that layout (meaning spacing) matters, so relying on a browser
> rendering HTML is probably not an option. The template will be a kind of
> background on which the placeholders will be laid out, and I imagine
> it's the template that will be the tricky part.

My suggestion is the following:

  1. make a SVG for template with Illustrator, Inkscape and so on
  2. substitute placeholders in the SVG by ERB, Amrita and so on
  3. generate PDF from the substituted SVG.
      (See [ruby-talk:225127])

# You can't use PDF::Writer for this suggestion.

Thanks,
--
kou

--
Giles Bowkett
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org

6

You can also use MasterView to generate xml (for SVG or to use with XSL-FO).
We don't have any special directives for this purpose but many of the
standard ones would work nicely.

In the java world we would use xsl-fo and an FO processor like Apache FOP to
generate PDF's. A low tech way to do this would be to have ruby shell out
and launch FOP to convert the XSL-FO formatted xml to PDF.

I don't know if there are other C/C++ libraries (commercial or otherwise)
that could do the same thing.

Jeff Barczewski
MasterView Template engine project founder
http://masterview.org/
http://rubyforge.org/projects/masterview

···

On 11/15/06, Kouhei Sutou <kou@cozmixng.org> wrote:

Hi,

2006/11/16, J. B. Rainsberger <jbrains762@gmail.com>:

> I am about to do some research tomorrow, but if any of you has an
> obvious answer, then that would help. I am looking to build PDFs from
> Rails views, and I'd like some guidance on how to go about it.

> I want to put placeholders, both text and images, onto a template and
> end up with a PDF. I'm pretty open about how that all happens, so feel
> free to make wild suggestions. The only important constraint I can think
> of is that layout (meaning spacing) matters, so relying on a browser
> rendering HTML is probably not an option. The template will be a kind of
> background on which the placeholders will be laid out, and I imagine
> it's the template that will be the tricky part.

My suggestion is the following:

  1. make a SVG for template with Illustrator, Inkscape and so on
  2. substitute placeholders in the SVG by ERB, Amrita and so on
  3. generate PDF from the substituted SVG.
      (See [ruby-talk:225127])