wisepdf

Wkhtmltopdf wrapper done right.

Wisepdf uses the shell utility wkhtmltopdf to serve a PDF file to a user from HTML. In other words, rather than dealing with a PDF generation DSL of some sort, you simply write an HTML view as you would normally, then let PDF take care of the hard stuff.

Wisepdf is inspired by Wicked PDF and PDFKit. PDF is optimized to use with Rails 3.1 (3.2), Ruby 1.9.2 and wkhtmltopdf 0.10.0 (and above).

Installation

First, be sure to install wkhtmltopdf. Note that versions before 0.9.0 have problems on some machines with reading/writing to streams. This plugin relies on streams to communicate with wkhtmltopdf.

More information about wkhtmltopdf could be found here.

Add this to your Gemfile:

gem 'wisepdf'

if you don't already have wkhtmltopdf installed on your machine you can get up and running quickly by adding this to your Gemfile:

gem 'wkhtmltopdf-binary'

then do:

bundle install

How does it work?

Basic Usage

class ThingsController < ApplicationController
  def show
    respond_to do |format|
      format.html
      format.pdf do
        render :pdf => "file_name"
      end
    end
  end
end

Advanced Usage with all available options

class ThingsController < ApplicationController
  def show
    respond_to do |format|
      format.html
      format.pdf do
        render :pdf                            => 'file_name',
               :template                       => 'things/show.pdf.erb',
               :layout                         => 'pdf.html',                   # use 'pdf.html' for a pdf.html.erb file
               :show_as_html                   => params[:debug].present?,      # allow debuging based on url param
               :orientation                    => 'Landscape',                  # default Portrait
               :page_size                      => 'A4, Letter, ...',            # default A4
               :save_to_file                   => Rails.root.join('pdfs', "#{filename}.pdf"),
               :save_only                      => false,                        # depends on :save_to_file being set first
               :proxy                          => 'TEXT',
               :basic_auth                     => false                         # when true username & password are automatically sent from session
               :username                       => 'TEXT',
               :password                       => 'TEXT',
               :cover                          => 'URL',
               :dpi                            => 'dpi',
               :encoding                       => 'TEXT',
               :user_style_sheet               => 'URL',
               :cookie                         => ['_session_id SESSION_ID'], # could be an array or a single string in a 'name value' format
               :post                           => ['query QUERY_PARAM'],    # could be an array or a single string in a 'name value' format
               :redirect_delay                 => NUMBER,
               :zoom                           => FLOAT,
               :page_offset                    => NUMBER,
               :book                           => true,
               :default_header                 => true,
               :disable_javascript             => false,
               :greyscale                      => true,
               :lowquality                     => true,
               :enable_plugins                 => true,
               :disable_internal_links         => true,
               :disable_external_links         => true,
               :print_media_type               => true,
               :disable_smart_shrinking        => true,
               :use_xserver                    => true,
               :no_background                  => true,
               :margin => {:top                => SIZE,                         # default 10 (mm)
                           :bottom             => SIZE,
                           :left               => SIZE,
                           :right              => SIZE},
               :header => {:html => { :template => 'users/header.pdf.erb',  # use :template OR :url
                                      :layout   => 'pdf_plain.html',        # optional, use 'pdf_plain.html' for a pdf_plain.html.erb file, defaults to main layout
                                      :url      => 'www.example.com',
                                      :locals   => { :foo => @bar }},
                           :center             => 'TEXT',
                           :font_name          => 'NAME',
                           :font_size          => SIZE,
                           :left               => 'TEXT',
                           :right              => 'TEXT',
                           :spacing            => REAL,
                           :line               => true},
               :footer => {:html => { :template => 'shared/footer.pdf.erb', # use :template OR :url
                                      :layout   => 'pdf_plain.html',        # optional, use 'pdf_plain.html' for a pdf_plain.html.erb file, defaults to main layout
                                      :url      => 'www.example.com',
                                      :locals   => { :foo => @bar }},
                           :center             => 'TEXT',
                           :font_name          => 'NAME',
                           :font_size          => SIZE,
                           :left               => 'TEXT',
                           :right              => 'TEXT',
                           :spacing            => REAL,
                           :line               => true},
               :outline => {:outline           => true,
                            :outline_depth     => LEVEL}
      end
    end
  end
end

By default, it will render without a layout (:layout => false) and the template for the current controller and action.

Super Advanced Usage

If you need to just create a pdf and not display it:

# create a pdf from a string
pdf = Wisepdf::Writer.new.to_pdf('<h1>Hello There!</h1>')

# or from your controller, using views & templates and all other options as normal
pdf = render_to_string :pdf => "some_file_name"

# then save to a file
save_path = Rails.root.join('pdfs','filename.pdf')
File.open(save_path, 'wb') do |file|
  file << pdf
end

If you need to display utf encoded characters, add this to your pdf views or layouts:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

Styles

You must define absolute paths to CSS files, images, and javascripts; the best option is to use the wisepdf_stylesheet_tag, wisepdf_image_tag, and wisepdf_javascript_tag helpers.

<!DOCTYPE html