rails_pdf

RailsPDF

Create PDF documents in Rails your app from HTML, CSS and JS.

Features:

• Basically, you can create any HTML/CSS/JS/Images page and save into PDF
• Generate PDF on the fly or save to disk
• With header, footer, page numbers, layout support
• Has few starter templates to help with most popular reports. Just create some and re-edit it
• Support for Charts libraries
• ERB/SCSS support
• Custome & Google fonts
• Separates PDF templates from app views
• Doesn't insert any middleware into your app
• Pub format is similar to slim
• Pass locals to the view

It's uses ReLaXedJS tool, which is wrapper arround chromium headless.

The idea of this gem is to separate logic of PDF creation from regular Rails views/controllers. Make it independent and easy to maintain.

Template starters (build-it with generator)

If you want to contribute and add more templates - it' very easy to do. See #Templates section of this doc.

Template: simple_invoice	Template: basic_invoice	Template: chart1
Template: products

Usage

You can use predefined starter templates (and you are welcome to contribute and create additional templates):

Use template starters:

• rails g rails_pdf new invoice_report (create blank template for PDF)
• rails g rails_pdf basic_invoice report
• rails g rails_pdf chart1 report
• rails g rails_pdf simple_invoice report

After you've generated PDF template, you can edit it in app/pdf/<folder>/<file> file.

You can use JS/CSS files from app/pdf/shared (which includes bootstrap 4, foundation 6, Found Awesome 5, Charts.js).

This is how you can generate and send PDF files on the fly:

  def report
    RailsPDF.template("report2/invoice.pug.erb").render do |data|
      send_data(data, type: 'application/pdf', disposition: 'inline', filename: 'report.pdf')
    end
  end

  # or return file as attachment

  def invoice
    RailsPDF.template("report2/invoice.pug.erb").render do |data|
      send_data(data, type: 'application/pdf', disposition: 'attachment', filename: 'report.pdf')
    end
  end

  # sample with locals
  # works similar how regular partials works

  def report
    @invoice = Invoice.find(params[:id])
    RailsPDF.template("report2/invoice.pug.erb").locals(invoice: @invoice).render do |data|
      send_data(data, type: 'application/pdf', disposition: 'inline', filename: 'report.pdf')
    end
  end

If you need to create PDF file and save to file on drive:

RailsPDF.template("report/chart.pug.erb").render_to_file('path/docs/report.pdf') # File

# or for html template

RailsPDF.template("sales/invoice.html.erb").render_to_file('path/docs/report.pdf') # File

Same but save PDF into Temfile:

RailsPDF.template("report/chart.pug.erb").render_to_tempfile('report.pdf') # Tempfile

With ERB files you can use App code (like models, etc). For example you can iterate over @users and output in PDF.

JS/CSS/Images

Basically you need to put an absolute path to asset or remote URL (for example on CDN. but local files works faster).

style
  include:scss <%= Rails.root %>/app/pdf/report/stylesheets/invoice.scss

img(src="<%= Rails.root %>/app/pdf/shared/images/rails_pdf.png")

script(src='<%= Rails.root %>/app/pdf/shared/javascripts/Chart.bundle.min.js')

Installation

Installation of gem is very simple, it's just requires one additional step to install RelaxedJS tool which is using Chrome headless.

Requirements

• RelaxedJS 0.2.0+ (check with relaxed --version)
• Chrome headless (bundled with relaxedjs)
• Rails 4.2+ app

Install RelaxedJS

$ git clone https://github.com/RelaxedJS/ReLaXed.git .
$ npm install
$ sudo npm link --unsafe-perm=true

Verify it's installed with: relaxed --version.

Gemfile

gem 'rails_pdf'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Templates

Tips

• if you want to add a page-break in document: div(style="page-break-before:always")
• if you are using bootstrap and you want to use columns - include bootstrap.print.css and use styles from it.
• if you are using Charts.js and you want to clear and readable text put in options: devicePixelRatio: 3,
• you can define size of page using in SCSS:

  // A4
  $page-width: 8.27in;
  $page-height: 11.69in;

• if you want to add header/footer (sample: lib/generators/rails_pdf/templates/simple_invoice/invoice.pug.erb)

  h1 My document
  p some paragraph

  template#page-header
    p I appear at the top of the page

  template#page-footer
    p I appear at the bottom of the page

• if you see an error, or something is not generated check TMP folder (e.g. /tmp) tmp/*.html file (see most recent files).
• if you have problems with Charts.js you can add setTimeout(...) and execute chart creation in 200-300ms.

Development

• open test/dummy
• bundle exec rake db:migrate
• bundle exec rails s -b 0.0.0.0
• open localhost:3000/report.pdf
• modify templates in app/pdf

Adding a new template

• add new template in lib/generators/rails_pdf/templates and add folder with template (html,css,js)
• you can use CSS/JS from templates/shared folder
• edit lib/generators/rails_pdf/rails_pdf_generator.rb add new type of report
• create screenshot of template and put in docs folder
• update docs
• create PR

TODO

• more starter templates
  • add starter template with page numbers
• add different charts
• better way to include JS/CSS/images
• maybe we don't need to include all views
• support non-rails apps
• specs
• travis CI
• codeclimate
• check support for older Rails (should work but check is needed)
• check embedding in emails
• maybe add ability to save webpage by url or HTML snippet to PDF, e.g. RailsPDF.url("http://google.com").render_to_file("google.com.pdf")
• better gem logo :)

Production

Before deploy app to production please don't forget to install Relaxed.JS on it.

Contributing

You are welcome to contribute.

Contributors

• https://github.com/gambala

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.