A guide to using an HTML template to create a PDF via a render_to_pdf
utility function.
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Open your Django project or create a blank one
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Install
xhtml2pdf
docs:Using Python 3
pip install --pre xhtml2pdf
Using Python 2
pip install xhtml2pdf
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Add a
utils.py
module to your project: -
Write the
render_to_pdf
function:from io import BytesIO from django.http import HttpResponse from django.template.loader import get_template from xhtml2pdf import pisa def render_to_pdf(template_src, context_dict={}): template = get_template(template_src) html = template.render(context_dict) result = BytesIO() pdf = pisa.pisaDocument(BytesIO(html.encode("ISO-8859-1")), result) if not pdf.err: return HttpResponse(result.getvalue(), content_type='application/pdf') return None
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Create html template such as
invoice.html
intemplates/pdf
** Recommended to use internal/inline stylesheets** :<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Title</title> <style type="text/css"> body { font-weight: 200; font-size: 14px; } .header { font-size: 20px; font-weight: 100; text-align: center; color: #007cae; } .title { font-size: 22px; font-weight: 100; /* text-align: right;*/ padding: 10px 20px 0px 20px; } .title span { color: #007cae; } .details { padding: 10px 20px 0px 20px; text-align: left !important; /*margin-left: 40%;*/ } .hrItem { border: none; height: 1px; /* Set the hr color */ color: #333; /* old IE */ background-color: #fff; /* Modern Browsers */ } </style> </head> <body> <div class='wrapper'> <div class='header'> <p class='title'>Invoice # </p> </div> <div> <div class='details'> Bill to: <br/> Amount: <br/> Date: <hr class='hrItem' /> </div> </div> </body> </html>
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Use in a view:
from django.http import HttpResponse from django.views.generic import View from yourproject.utils import render_to_pdf #created in step 4 class GeneratePdf(View): def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs): data = { 'today': datetime.date.today(), 'amount': 39.99, 'customer_name': 'Cooper Mann', 'order_id': 1233434, } pdf = render_to_pdf('pdf/invoice.html', data) return HttpResponse(pdf, content_type='application/pdf')
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Force PDF Download:
class GeneratePDF(View): def get(self, request, *args, **kwargs): template = get_template('invoice.html') context = { "invoice_id": 123, "customer_name": "John Cooper", "amount": 1399.99, "today": "Today", } html = template.render(context) pdf = render_to_pdf('invoice.html', context) if pdf: response = HttpResponse(pdf, content_type='application/pdf') filename = "Invoice_%s.pdf" %("12341231") content = "inline; filename='%s'" %(filename) download = request.GET.get("download") if download: content = "attachment; filename='%s'" %(filename) response['Content-Disposition'] = content return response return HttpResponse("Not found")