django-nightmare-pdf

Convert HTML to pdf with django using nightmare

Requirements

• Python (2.7) (Need to be tested for 3.x)
• Django (1.10, 1.9) (Need to be tested for previous versions)

Dependencies

This django app depends on Nightmare, you need to first install it using npm:

npm install nightmare

Warning, as of today, getting nightmare/electron to work on linux is not that easy.

Installation

Install using pip :

pip install nightmare_pdf

Add nightmare_pdf to your INSTALLED_APPS setting.

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'nightmare_pdf',
)

create a directory to hold pdf files created by Nightmare, default to pdf_temp :

mkdir pdf_temp

Example

Generate a pdf from an url and save it to database, or retrieve it as a ContentFile, or return it inside an HttpResponse :

from nightmare_pdf.generators import PDFGenerator

pdf = PDFGenerator(url="https://github.com/charlesthk/django-nightmare-pdf",

# Save it to database and retrieve a PdfDoc Object (database):
pdf.save(
		filename='nightmare_pdf',
		title="nightmare_pdf on github",
		description="Convert HTML to pdf with django using nightmare")

# Get the PDf as a Django ContentFile named 'my_pdf_file.pdf' :
pdf_content_file = pdf.get_content_file('my_pdf_file') 

# Return a Django HttpResponse with the PDF Attached named 'my_pdf_file.pdf':
return pdf.get_http_response('my_pdf_file')

PDFGenerator options

The PDFGenerator class accepts the following arguments :

• url [required]
• timeout [Optional] default to 1000, defines the timeout between the opening and the rendering of the url by nightmare
• page_size [Optional] default to 'A4', accepts options are A3, A4, A5, Legal, Letter or Tabloid
• landscape [Optional] default to 0, defines whether rendering pdf in landscape mode
• print_background [Optional] default to 1, defines whether printing background
• margins_type [Optional] default to 1, defines which margins to use. Uses 0 for default margin, 1 for no margin, and 2 for minimum margin.
• script [Optional] default to DEFAULT_RENDER_SCRIPT, defines which render script to use.
• temp_dir [Optional] default to DEFAULT_TEMP_DIR, defines which temp dir to use.

Model use for saving PDF

When using save(filename, title='', description='') method of PDFGenerator, the following model is used:

class PdfDoc(models.Model):
	"""
	Store each generated pdf
	"""
	title = models.CharField(verbose_name=_("Title"), max_length=255, blank=True)
	description = models.TextField(verbose_name=_("Description"), blank=True)
	document = models.FileField(verbose_name=_("Document PDF"), upload_to=pdf_settings.UPLOAD_TO)
	created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=False, auto_now_add=True, verbose_name=_('Creation'))
	updated_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True, auto_now_add=False, verbose_name=_('Update'))

Settings

Add your settings to your main django settings file. The settings are set by default to :

NIGHTMARE_PDF = {
    'UPLOAD_TO': 'pdfs',
    'NODE_PATH': 'node',
    'DEFAULT_RENDER_SCRIPT': os.path.join(NIGHTMARE_PDF_DIR, 'render_pdf.js'),
    'DEFAULT_TEMP_DIR': os.path.join(settings.BASE_DIR, 'pdf_temp')
}

UPLOAD_TO

Define the directory or the function to be used when saving PDFs, default to pdfs.

NODE_PATH

Define the path to Node binary, default to node.

DEFAULT_RENDER_SCRIPT

Define which render_script to use by default, default to render_pdf.js inside the package.

DEFAULT_TEMP_DIR

Define the directory to use for temporarily generated pdf by Nightmare. default to pdf_temp.

Support

If you are having issues, please let us know or submit a pull request.

License

The project is licensed under the MIT License.