Generating PDFs

Django is able to output PDF files dynamically using views. This is made possible by the excellent, open-source ReportLab Python PDF library. The advantage of generating PDF files dynamically is that you can create customized PDFs for different purposes – say, for different users or different pieces of content.

Install Reportlab

The ReportLab library is available on PyPI. A user guide (not coincidentally, a PDF file) is also available for download. You can install ReportLab with pip:
$ pip install reportlab

Test your installation by importing it in the Python interactive interpreter:
>>> import reportlab

If that command doesn’t raise any errors, the installation worked.

Write Your View

The key to generating PDFs dynamically with Django is that the ReportLab API, like the csv library acts on file-like objects, like Django’s HttpResponse. Here’s a Hello World example:

from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
from django.http import HttpResponse

def some_view(request):
# Create the HttpResponse object with the appropriate PDF headers.
response = HttpResponse(content_type=’application/pdf’)
response[‘Content-Disposition’] = ‘attachment;
filename=”somefilename.pdf”‘

# Create the PDF object, using the response object as its “file.”
p = canvas.Canvas(response)

# Draw things on the PDF. Here’s where the PDF generation happens.
# See the ReportLab documentation for the full list of functionality.
p.drawString(100, 100, “Hello world.”)

# Close the PDF object cleanly, and we’re done.
p.showPage()
p.save()
return response

The code and comments should be self-explanatory, but a few things deserve a mention:

•  The response gets a special MIME type, application/pdf. This tells browsers that the document is a PDF file, rather than an HTML file.
• The response gets an additional Content-Disposition header, which contains the name of the PDF file. This filename is arbitrary: Call it whatever you want. It’ll be used by browsers in the Save as… dialogue, etc.
• The Content-Disposition header starts with ‘attachment; ‘ in this example. This forces Web browsers to pop-up a dialog box prompting/confirming how to handle the document even if a default is set on the machine. If you leave off ‘attachment;’, browsers will handle the PDF using whatever program/plugin they’ve been configured to use for PDFs. Here’s what that code would look like:
  response[‘Content-Disposition’] = ‘filename=”somefilename.pdf”‘
• Hooking into the ReportLab API is easy: Just pass response as the first argument to canvas.Canvas. The Canvas class expects a file-like object, and HttpResponse objects fit the bill.
• Note that all subsequent PDF-generation methods are called on the PDF object (in this case, p) – not on response.
• Finally, it’s important to call showPage() and save() on the PDF file.

 

Complex PDF’s

If you’re creating a complex PDF document with ReportLab, consider using the io library as a temporary holding place for your PDF file. This library provides a file-like object interface that is particularly efficient. Here’s the above Hello World example rewritten to use io:

from io import BytesIO
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
from django.http import HttpResponse

def some_view(request):
# Create the HttpResponse object with the appropriate PDF headers.
response = HttpResponse(content_type=’application/pdf’)
response[‘Content-Disposition’] = ‘attachment;
filename=”somefilename.pdf”‘

buffer = BytesIO()

# Create the PDF object, using the BytesIO object as its “file.”
p = canvas.Canvas(buffer)

# Draw things on the PDF. Here’s where the PDF generation happens.
# See the ReportLab documentation for the full list of functionality.
p.drawString(100, 100, “Hello world.”)

# Close the PDF object cleanly.
p.showPage()
p.save()

# Get the value of the BytesIO buffer and write it to the response.
pdf = buffer.getvalue()
buffer.close()
response.write(pdf)
return response

Further Resources

•  PDFlib is another PDF-generation library that has Python bindings. To use it with Django, just use the same concepts explained in this article.
• Pisa XHTML2PDF is yet another PDF-generation library. Pisa ships with an example of how to integrate Pisa with Django.
• HTMLdoc is a command-line script that can convert HTML to PDF. It doesn’t have a Python interface, but you can escape out to the shell using system or popen and retrieve the output in Python.

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