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fastpdf

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fastpdf

SDK for PDF rendering, generation & transformation via Fast PDF Service.

1.0.4
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FastPDF Python Package

Welcome to fastpdf Python Package, the versatile and quick solution for your PDF rendering needs. This package is a SDK for fastpdfservice.com REST API.

Overview

fastpdf is a Python package designed to simplify the PDF generation process. It streamlines the procedure of rendering HTML/CSS templates into a PDF document, offering granular control over the rendering options, and provides the ability to add images and barcodes into your PDFs.

fastpdf leverages the PDF manipulation API available at fastpdfservice.com, ensuring high performance, scalability, and reliability. By using fastpdf, you are able to generate complex, high-quality PDFs efficiently.

Key Features

HTML/CSS to PDF: Render your HTML/CSS templates into a PDF with ease and precision.
Header/Footer Management: Easily manage the header and footer of your documents with flexible rendering options.
Barcode & Image Integration: Seamlessly integrate images and barcodes into your PDFs.
Render Options: Advanced render options allow granular control over your output. Control aspects like margins, orientation, scales, etc.
Image Mode Selection: fastpdf supports various image modes to tailor the image rendering to your needs.

Getting Started

Before you start with the fastpdf Python Package, make sure you have Python 3.6+ installed on your machine.

To use fastpdf, you'll first need to register an account to fastpdfservice.com, and get your API key.

Install fastpdf using pip:

pip install fastpdf

Import the package in your Python script:

from fastpdf import PDFClient

To start with, make sure you have your FastPDF service API token handy. This is required for all API calls to the FastPDF service. You can find your token under API settings in your FastPDF profile.

client = PDFClient("API_KEY")

Please refer to the documentation for more details on the available features.

Creating a Basic Template

Creating a basic template is simple. Let's start by creating an HTML document with a placeholder for a name variable. Then, you'll need to create a Template object and set name and format.

from fastpdf import Template

template_str = "<html><body>Hello world, my name is {{name}}!</body></html>".encode()
template_data = Template(name="basic-document", format="html")
template = client.add_template(template_str, template_data)

*Make sure you do not forget to `encode()` your string. Otherwise, the string will be interpreted as a filename.*

In this template, {{name}} is a placeholder that will be replaced by a real value when generating a PDF.

Your First Rendering

Now, let's bring our document to life. We've got our template id handy, and our data ready to be cast into the chosen template. But don't worry if you've misplaced the template id - a quick detour to your template dashboard will point you right to it. In our data object, we set a value for the name variable that we defined in our template.

document_data = { 'name': 'John' }

template_id = template["id"]
document = client.render_template(template_id, document_data)

Finally, we save it to the disk using the save() convenience function.

client.save(document, "path/to/basic-document.pdf")

And that's it! You've just brought your first PDF to life.

For Loops

FastPDF allows for more complex templates. For instance, you can use control structures like for loops and if statements in your templates. Here is how to iterate over a list of items, using a for loop.

template_content = """
<html>
<body>
    <ul>
    {% for item in items %}
        <li>{{ item }}</li>
    {% endfor %}
    </ul>
</body>
</html>
""".encode()
template_data = Template(name="for-loop-document", format="html")
template = client.add_template(template_content, template_data)

In this template, {% for item in items %} starts the loop, and {% endfor %} ends it.

Next, we define our rendering_data by associating a list of item value to the items key, and render our document.

document_data = { 'items': ["First item", "Second item", "Last item"] }

template_id = template["id"]
document = client.render_template(template_id, document_data)
# Save to disk, if needed
client.save(document, "path/to/loop-document.pdf")

If Statements

If statements can be used to conditionally include parts of the template, based on the rendering data. Here's an example:

template_content = """
<html>
<body>
    {% if user_premium %}
        <p>Welcome, premium user!</p>
    {% else %}
        <p>Welcome, regular user!</p>
    {% endif %}
</body>
</html>
""".encode()
template_data = Template(name="if-document", format="html")
template = client.add_template(template_content, template_data)

In this example, {% if user_premium %} starts the if statement, and {% endif %} ends it. If user_premium is true, the "Welcome, premium user!" message will be included in the generated PDF. Otherwise, the "Welcome, regular user!" message will be included.

Stylesheets

*Please ensure that your stylesheets are written purely in CSS. As of now, FastPDF does not support precompiled CSS languages like SCSS, or CSS frameworks like Tailwind. Stick to standard CSS to ensure compatibility and successful rendering.*

You can do this in one of two ways: by using a separate stylesheet, or by using inline CSS.

The latter works as usual, by either setting the style property html tags, or by writing your css classes in the header of the template:

<html>
<head>
    my-class {
        color: #f43f54;
        font-size: 12px;
        font-weight: bold;
    }
</head>
<body>
    <p class='my-class'>Welcome, {{name}}!</p>
    <p style='color: #ccc'> Goodbye ! </p>
</body>
</html>

Alternatively, you can use the add_stylesheet() method to add a stylesheet to your template:

from fastpdf import StylesheetFile

stylesheet_path = "styles.css"
stylesheet_data = StylesheetFile(format="css")

template_id = template["id"]
client.add_stylesheet(template_id, stylesheet_path, stylesheet_data)

Your template will now be rendered with style !

Adding an image

FastPDF allows you to add images to your templates, which can then be rendered into your final PDF documents. Here's how you can accomplish this.

To begin, we create our template with an <img> tag, using our image uri in the src property as followed:

template_content = """
<html>
<body>
    <img src="{{my_favourite_logo}}">
    <p>Welcome, {{name}}!</p>
</body>
</html>
""".encode()
template_data = Template(name="image-document", format="html")
template = client.add_template(template_content, template_data)

Then, we add an image to our template, and set the same image uri. This step can be done from your template dashboard.

from fastpdf import ImageFile

image_path="my-logo.png"
image_data = ImageFile(format="png", uri="my_favourite_logo")
template_id = template["id"]
res = client.add_image(template_id, image_path, image_data)

Finally, we render our document. As usual, we define our rendering data object with our variable.

from fastpdf import ImageFile

image_path="my-logo.png"
image_data = ImageFile(format="png", uri="my_favourite_logo")

template_id = template["id"]
res = client.add_image(template_id, image_path, image_data)

Custom Header and Footer

By default, FastPDF will include a header, composed of the document title and the date, and a footer with page numbers. You can turn them on and off separately when adding your Template or during rendering with the RenderOptions.

It is also possible to add custom headers and footers to your PDF documents. These headers and footers can include images, and dynamic content such as the current page number, total number of pages, and the current date. Let's take a look at how to do this.

Firstly, let's create a new template:

template_content = """
<html>
<body>
    <h1>{{title}}</h1>
    <p>{{content}}</p>
</body>
</html>
""".encode()
template_data = Template(name="customer-header-footer-document", format="html")

You might have noticed that we have not added the template yet. It is because we need to define our header and footer first. Headers and footers comes with special HTML classes that can be used to inject printing values into them. We will use them to set the page number.

header_content = """
<div style="text-align: center; padding: 10px; font-size: 8px;">
    <h2>{{header_note}}</h2>
</div>
""".encode()
footer_content = """
<div style="text-align: center; margin: auto; padding: 10px; font-size: 8px;">
    <span class="pageNumber"></span>
</div>
""".encode()
template = client.add_template(template_content, template_data, 
                               header_data=header_content, 
                               footer_data=footer_content)

Now, when you render the PDF, pass the header_note, title and content in your data:

document_data = { 
    'title': "My document",  
    'content': "My document content",  
    'header_note': "This is my favorite header",  
}

template_id = template["id"]
document = client.render_template(template_id, document_data)
# Save to disk, if needed
client.save(document, "path/to/custom-header-document.pdf")

Generating Multiple PDFs

The FastPDF API also provides the ability to generate multiple PDFs in a single API call. This feature, referred to as batch processing, can be useful in situations where you need to generate many PDFs with different data.

The way batch processing works in FastPDF is that you provide an array of data objects, each of which corresponds to one PDF. Let's see how to do this in practice.

First, let's prepare our template and data. Suppose we want to generate PDFs for each user in our system.

template_content = """
<html>
<body>
    <h1>Welcome, {{name}}!</h1>
    <p>Email: {{email}}</p>
</body>
</html>
""".encode()
template_data = Template(name="image-document", format="html")
template= client.add_template(template_content, template_data)

Here, the template contains placeholders for user data (name and email). Next, we will prepare our data array. Each element of the array corresponds to one document. Here we will render 3 documents.

users = [
    {"name": "John Doe", "email": "john@example.com"},
    {"name": "Jane Doe", "email": "jane@example.com"},
    {"name": "Richard Roe", "email": "richie@example.com"},
]

Finally, we can call the render_template_many() method with our template id and batch data.

template_id = template["id"]
zip_result = client.render_template_many(template_id, users)

The render_template_many() method will return a zip file that contains the 3 PDFs. You now have the choice between extracting the zip_result into a python list, or in a directory on your disk, both using the extract() method.

# Save pdfs to the disk
client.extract(zip_result, "path/to/directory/")

# Or get a list of PDF
pdfs = client.extract(zip_result)

Support

For any questions or support, reach out to us at support@fastpdfservice.com.

License

fastpdf Python Package is licensed under the MIT license. See LICENSE for more details.

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