Grails Wkhtmltox / Wkhtmltopdf

This plugin provides an easy integration of the wkthmltox library into Grails.

Wkhtmltopdf

"Simple shell utility to convert html to pdf using the webkit rendering engine, and qt." http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/ GNU Lesser GPL

Installation

mac

brew install wkhtmltopdf

linux

apt-get install wkhtmltopdf

see: http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/wiki/compilation compiled versions available at: http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/downloads/list

finally make sure the following command works as expected:

wkhtmltopdf www.google.de test.pdf

Configuration

put the following line into your Config.groovy and adjust the path to your wkhtmltox binary ( which wkhtmltopdf )

unix

grails.plugin.wkhtmltox.binary = "/usr/bin/wkhtmltopdf"

windows

grails.plugin.wkhtmltox.binary = "C:/local/wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltopdf.exe"

also add the pdf mime type to Config.groovy

grails.mime.types = [
    all:           '*/*',
    .....
   pdf:         'application/x-pdf'
]

Usage

to stream the content of an controller-action as pdf just call: /context/some/someAction.pdf

class SomerController {
    def someAction = {
        def someInstance = SomeDomainObject.get(params.id)

        render( filename:"File ${someInstance.id}.pdf",
				view:"/some/someGspTemplate",
                model:[someInstance:someInstance],
                header:"/pdf/someHeader",
                footer:"/pdf/someFooter",
                marginLeft:20,
                marginTop:35,
                marginBottom:20,
                marginRight:20,
                headerSpacing:10,
        )
    }
}

Or create binary pdf data and use them for any other purpose

class SomeService implements Serializable {

		def byte[] pdfData = wkhtmltoxService.makePdf(
                view: "/pdf/someGspTemplate",
                model: [someInstance: someInstance],
                header: "/pdf/someHeader",
                footer: "/pdf/someFooter",
                marginLeft: 20,
                marginTop: 35,
                marginBottom: 20,
                marginRight: 20,
                headerSpacing: 10,
        )
	
	
		// DO Something e.g. send as mail
		//sendAsynchronousMail {
        //    multipart true
        //    to "mail@mail.de"
        //    subject "see PDF Attachment";
        //    attachBytes "PDF Attachment.pdf", "application/x-pdf", pdfData
        //    body "see my pdf attachment"
        //}
    }
}

write your gsps as usual, just make sure, that the url's to the resources are absolute and reachable by the host maschine

<link rel="stylesheet" href="${resource(dir: '/css/style.css', absolute: true)}" type="text/css"/>
<img src="${resource(dir: '/images/image.jpg', absolute: true)}" width="200px"/>

Options

see the following command for all options available:

wkhtmltopdf --extended-help

Known issues

• wkhtmltox must work ( try: wkhtmltopdf www.myhomepage.com myhomepage.pdf see: http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/wiki/Usage )
• not tested on Windows (except windows7)