Export data to PDF

Rails
1

Hi, I need to export data to a PDF file with proper CSS as displayed in
HTML. Could you please tell me what is the best and proper way to do
this.

Thanks,
Nitin M…

2

On Feb 18, 10:32am, Nitin M. [email protected] wrote:

Hi, I need to export data to a PDF file with proper CSS as displayed in
HTML. Could you please tell me what is the best and proper way to do this.

There are lots of ways to do this, and deciding which one is right for
your app takes a LOT more information than your post provides…

–Matt J.

3

Try prawn gem. Its a good place to start so here
http://prawn.majesticseacreature.com/

Hope it helps.

4

If you have a linux server, you can use wkhtmltopdf. I found it
non-trivial to set up, though.

5

Nitin M. wrote in post #1047547:

Hi, I need to export data to a PDF file with proper CSS as displayed in
HTML. Could you please tell me what is the best and proper way to do
this.

Thanks,
Nitin M…

Go with prawn gem.

6

Hi, Thanks for your replies.

First I’ll put more details of my development environment and the
requirements:

I have linux server (FC8). The project was started 4 years back with
Ruby
1.8.6 and Rails 1.2.3. It’s very old now but I can’t upgrade to latest
version as it has become a big project and upgrading might cause lots of
issues.

Regarding web server I am using native Mogrel server.

I need to export the whole HTML page as it is to the PDF with all the
CSS
styles present in the page. I prefer the Prawn gem way but
unfortunately
it isn’t supported in the version of Rails used in my project.

I have tried “**wkhtmltopdf”. I am seeing the issue that the
application
gets stuck while running the command to generate PDF.

I have also tried using "htmldoc gem" which works well with static
HTML
content in *rpdf *file. iterating over array is not working in rpdf.

Let me know if it’s possible to use Prawn with Rails 1.2.3 somehow. or,
how
to resolve issue seen with “wkhtmltopdf” binary execution.

Thanks!

7

If you are running wkhtmltopdf in debug mode, you need to run a separate
mongrel and point the wkhtmltopdf to that url, otherwise it tries to hit
your mongrel instance, which is waiting for wkhtmltopdf to finish
running.

Cheers
Simon

On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:58:45 +0800, Nitin M.

8

Thanks Simon. Let me try this approach. But not looks a satisfactory
solution to me :slight_smile: running two servers of same application.

9

You only need to do that for development (when you are testing PDF
export). Your production system should already be running multiple
instances (otherwise only one person can view your site at a time) all
on
the same url.

On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:35:33 +0800, Nitin M.

10

On Feb 20, 2012, at 5:58 AM, Nitin M. wrote:

Hi, Thanks for your replies.

First I’ll put more details of my development environment and the requirements:

I have linux server (FC8). The project was started 4 years back with Ruby 1.8.6
and Rails 1.2.3. It’s very old now but I can’t upgrade to latest version as it has
become a big project and upgrading might cause lots of issues.

Regarding web server I am using native Mogrel server.

I need to export the whole HTML page as it is to the PDF with all the CSS styles
present in the page. I prefer the Prawn gem way but unfortunately it isn’t
supported in the version of Rails used in my project.

Take a look at PrinceXML, as it is designed to take (X)HTML and convert
it to PDF. It runs as a separate binary on your server, and it’s
extremely powerful. It costs serious money, but there is a free
evaluation version you can try.

Walter