Generating views in pdf, rtf, or doc format

Rails
1

I have a requirement to generate views (list and show views, including
data and uploaded images) into a format that can be saved and/or
emailed. I’m looking for opinions on the easiest way to achieve this.
I’ve researched the use of both PDF::Writer and Prawn, and it seems that
to re-generate my views in pdf format will require a lot of work. Is
there an easier way using .rtf or .doc files? The customer does not
have a preference, they just want the ability save/send hard-copies.

Thanks,
Brian

2

Brian P. wrote:

I have a requirement to generate views (list and show views, including
data and uploaded images) into a format that can be saved and/or
emailed. I’m looking for opinions on the easiest way to achieve this.

HTML can be saved or e-mailed. So can plain text. What more do you
need?

I’ve researched the use of both PDF::Writer and Prawn, and it seems that
to re-generate my views in pdf format will require a lot of work. Is
there an easier way using .rtf or .doc files? The customer does not
have a preference, they just want the ability save/send hard-copies.

Use PDF if HTML is not sufficient. MS Word files have no place on the
Web or in e-mail since they do not reliably preserve formatting across
computers, and RTF suffers from the same issues. If you don’t want to
recreate your views in Prawn markup, then try prawn_format, Flying
Saucer, wkhtmltopdf, or Prince, all of which will generate PDF files
from HTML. .

Thanks,
Brian

Best,
–Â
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]

3

Hi Brian,

I’d definitely recommend going with pdf, and use either princexml
(Prince - Convert HTML to PDF with CSS) or wkhtmltopdf (http://
code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/) to generate pdfs from your app’s html/
css. You’ll save a ton of time and effort using one of these two
tools, since you’d be working with the same html (with possibly
slightly diff css applied for the pdf output) used in your web app ui.

As for which one to choose, … If you (or the client?) can afford
the princexml license, princexml has greater print-related-css
implementation coverage than wkhtmltopdf. If you can’t afford or
don’t want to pay for the license, then go with wkhtmltopdf (and work
around any of those missing css calls as necessary).

Jeff