Prawnto (prawnto_2)¶ ↑

A rails plugin providing templating abilities for generating pdf files leveraging the kick-ass prawn library (prawn.majesticseacreature.com/)

This is my attempt to merge the various forks of the prawnto gem, and update it for Rails 3.1+. I want to thank the many developers who’s code I collected together for the gem. Main credit goes to the developer of the initial Prawnto plugin - smecsia.

I could use some help with the wiki. If you find this helpful, and aren’t up for contributing to the code, I would appreciate some help getting the docs in order.

Note: It has not been tested with earlier versions of Rails.

Installation in Rails 3.1+¶ ↑

In your Gemfile:

gem "prawnto_2", :require => "prawnto"

Then run:

bundle install

Now make a view:

<action name>.pdf.prawn

Usage¶ ↑

More Details will be coming to wiki.

As View in Controller¶ ↑

Simply create additional views that end with .pdf.prawn and rails will use the Prawnto template handler to render it properly. The beta has combined the regular .prawn and .prawn_dsl extensions. Now you won’t get tired of typing pdf.method, but instance variables get used. There are a number of options available which are detailed in the wiki (or will be soon).

As Attachment to Email¶ ↑

You can render PDF’s as an attachment to an email very simply with Prawnto.

class PdfEmailer < ActionMailer::Base
  default from: "from@example.com"

  def email_with_attachment
    @var1 = 1
    attachments["hello_world.pdf"] = render("test/default_render", :format => :pdf)
    mail :subject => "Hello", :to => "test@test.com" do |format|
      format.text
    end
  end
end

If you need something more complicated, you may want to consider using the Prawnto::Render.to_string method listed next to create your attachment content.

Gotcha: Something odd happens to the default format handling. You have to include the format block at the bottom, and specify the text, html, etc formats you want included on the body.

From Model (or anywhere else)¶ ↑

Experimental!!! Will be changed

Sometimes you need to be able to render a PDF from anywhere (Background process saving to the File, combining PDFs, etc), but you still want access to your helpers. This feature instantiates the most basic controller, and renders the template to a string for you to use. (more info coming to wiki soon)

class SuperModel
  ...
  def to_pdf
    @x = 1
    Prawnto::ModelRenderer.to_string "test/default_render.pdf", self
  end
end

Gotcha: Rails isn’t always using the correct formatting. If you’re having troubles, add the .pdf to the end of the requested template.

Tips & Tricks¶ ↑

Helper methods can be called from within the PDF views. To help keep PDF’s DRY, I would recommend creating a PdfHelper class for complex functionality. Don’t forget to add this helper to your emailer if you generate PDF’s as attachments.

Limited partial support is available. Check out the wiki for details.

Testing & Development¶ ↑

Running tests¶ ↑

Tests can be ran against different versions of Rails like so:

BUNDLE_GEMFILE=spec/gemfiles/Gemfile.rails-4.2.x bundle install BUNDLE_GEMFILE=spec/gemfiles/Gemfile.rails-4.2.x bundle exec rspec spec

Asset generation¶ ↑

All test assets have been generated using ruby 2.4 and prawn 2.2.2

To generate your own assets for alternate versions, launch the rails server and use it to generate new assets. The naming structure is: spec/assets/<ruby_version>/file_name-<prawn_version>.pdf

GetJobber/prawnto