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  • Creating PDF from HTML in rails

    @raghvendra.singh
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    Creating PDF from HTML in rails

    Hi friends,
    In rails if you want to generate a pdf, there are multiple gems available that will make your task easy. Normally the approach for creating a pdf will be first create a html template and then convert that template into pdf. Here I am going to tell you how we can use "wicked_pdf" gem.

    1) First you need to add the gem to your Gemfile:

    1.     gem 'wicked_pdf'

    2) Now run bundler in root directory:

    1.     > bundle

    3) Now create initializers by generators for customizing the configurable options available in wicked_pdf

    1.     > rails generate wicked_pdf
    2.     #=> 
    3.     create  config/initializers/wicked_pdf.rb

    4) If you are using an older version of rails, you may also need to configure the mime type inside config/initializers/mime_types.rb

    1.     Mime::Type.register "application/pdf", :pdf

    5) Now one thing to be noted wicked_pdf works over wkhtmltopdf, which needs to be installed on your machine, For installing wkhtmltopdf you can through the following link:
    Install pdfkit and wkhtmltopdf library on Ubuntu 12.04/ruby
    Alternatively you can install all the required components by adding a gem 'wkhtmltopdf-binary' in your Gemfile and running the bundle

    6) After that you need to update the path of the wkhtmltopdf inside the config/initializers/wicked_pdf.rb, if it is not the one where wkhtmltopdf if installed:

    1.     WickedPdf.config = {
    2.       exe_path: '/usr/local/bin/wkhtmltopdf'
    3.     }

    Note: For information regarding wkhtmltopdf you can see http://wkhtmltopdf.org/

    7) The output of a file in pdf can be achieved as simple as rendering html from a view like this:

    1.     class WelcomeController < ApplicationController
    2.       def index
    3.         respond_to do |format|
    4.           format.html
    5.           format.pdf do
    6.             render pdf: "index"
    7.           end
    8.         end
    9.       end
    10.     end

    If a index.pdf.erb is present there, it will get rendered as pdf

    8) Thus we can see that we can create html file with extension .pdf.erb and it will be rendered as a pdf. But as wkhtmltopdf is installed outside the rails application it will not get the layouts present in the rails application. for that we will use the wicked_pdf helpers like this:

    1.     <!doctype html>
    2.     <html>
    3.       <head>
    4.         <meta charset='utf-8' />
    5.         <%= wicked_pdf_stylesheet_link_tag "pdf" -%>
    6.         <%= wicked_pdf_javascript_include_tag "number_pages" %>
    7.       </head>
    8.       <body onload='number_pages'>
    9.         <div id="header">
    10.           <%= wicked_pdf_image_tag 'image path' %>
    11.         </div>
    12.         <div id="content">
    13.           <%= yield %>
    14.         </div>
    15.       </body>
    16.     </html>


    9) At last there are so many customizable options that can be used during the rendering of the pdf, some of them are like:

    1. respond_to do |format|
    2.       format.html
    3.       format.pdf do
    4.         render pdf: 'file_name',
    5.           disposition: 'attachment', # default 'inline'
    6.           template:'template_path',
    7.           ..............
    8.           header: {   
    9.              html:
    10.                {   
    11.                   template: 'some_header', # use :template OR :url
    12.                  layout: 'pdf_layout_name',
    13.                  .....
    14.                 }
    15.           },
    16.           footer: {   
    17.                html:
    18.                 {   
    19.                    template: 'some_footer',# use :template OR :url
    20.                   layout: 'pdf_layout_name',
    21.                   .....
    22.                 }
    23.           },
    24.           toc: {   
    25.              font_name: "NAME",
    26.              depth: LEVEL,
    27.              ......
    28.           }
    29.       end
    30.     end

    There are so many other customizable options that you can get at https://github.com/mileszs/wicked_pdf

    Ruby on Rails html2pdf WickedPDF
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