Outputting PDFs with Django

Outputting PDFs with Django

This document explains how to output PDF files dynamically using Django views.This is made possible by the excellent, open-source ReportLab Python PDFlibrary.

The advantage of generating PDF files dynamically is that you can createcustomized PDFs for different purposes — say, for different users or differentpieces of content.

For example, Django was used at kusports.com to generate customized,printer-friendly NCAA tournament brackets, as PDF files, for peopleparticipating in a March Madness contest.

Install ReportLab

The ReportLab library is available on PyPI. A user guide (notcoincidentally, a PDF file) is also available for download.You can install ReportLab with pip:

$ pip install reportlab

Test your installation by importing it in the Python interactive interpreter:

>>> import reportlab

If that command doesn't raise any errors, the installation worked.

Write your view

The key to generating PDFs dynamically with Django is that the ReportLab APIacts on file-like objects, and Django's HttpResponseobjects are file-like objects.

Here's a "Hello World" example:

from django.http import HttpResponse
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
 
def some_view(request):
    # Create the HttpResponse object with the appropriate PDF headers.
    response = HttpResponse(content_type='application/pdf')
    response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename="somefilename.pdf"'
 
    # Create the PDF object, using the response object as its "file."
    p = canvas.Canvas(response)
 
    # Draw things on the PDF. Here's where the PDF generation happens.
    # See the ReportLab documentation for the full list of functionality.
    p.drawString(100, 100, "Hello world.")
 
    # Close the PDF object cleanly, and we're done.
    p.showPage()
    p.save()
    return response

The code and comments should be self-explanatory, but a few things deserve amention:

The response gets a special MIME type, application/pdf. Thistells browsers that the document is a PDF file, rather than an HTML file.If you leave this off, browsers will probably interpret the output asHTML, which would result in ugly, scary gobbledygook in the browserwindow.
The response gets an additional Content-Disposition header, whichcontains the name of the PDF file. This filename is arbitrary: Call itwhatever you want. It'll be used by browsers in the "Save as…" dialog, etc.
The Content-Disposition header starts with 'attachment; ' in thisexample. This forces Web browsers to pop-up a dialog boxprompting/confirming how to handle the document even if a default is seton the machine. If you leave off 'attachment;', browsers will handlethe PDF using whatever program/plugin they've been configured to use forPDFs. Here's what that code would look like:

response['Content-Disposition'] = 'filename="somefilename.pdf"'

Hooking into the ReportLab API is easy: Just pass response as thefirst argument to canvas.Canvas. The Canvas class expects afile-like object, and HttpResponse objects fit thebill.
Note that all subsequent PDF-generation methods are called on the PDFobject (in this case, p) — not on response.
Finally, it's important to call showPage() and save() on the PDFfile.

Note

ReportLab is not thread-safe. Some of our users have reported odd issueswith building PDF-generating Django views that are accessed by many peopleat the same time.

Complex PDFs

If you're creating a complex PDF document with ReportLab, consider using theio library as a temporary holding place for your PDF file. Thislibrary provides a file-like object interface that is particularly efficient.Here's the above "Hello World" example rewritten to use io:

from io import BytesIO
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
from django.http import HttpResponse
 
def some_view(request):
    # Create the HttpResponse object with the appropriate PDF headers.
    response = HttpResponse(content_type='application/pdf')
    response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename="somefilename.pdf"'
 
    buffer = BytesIO()
 
    # Create the PDF object, using the BytesIO object as its "file."
    p = canvas.Canvas(buffer)
 
    # Draw things on the PDF. Here's where the PDF generation happens.
    # See the ReportLab documentation for the full list of functionality.
    p.drawString(100, 100, "Hello world.")
 
    # Close the PDF object cleanly.
    p.showPage()
    p.save()
 
    # Get the value of the BytesIO buffer and write it to the response.
    pdf = buffer.getvalue()
    buffer.close()
    response.write(pdf)
    return response

Other formats

Notice that there isn't a lot in these examples that's PDF-specific — just thebits using reportlab. You can use a similar technique to generate anyarbitrary format that you can find a Python library for. Also seeOutputting CSV with Django for another example and some techniques you can usewhen generated text-based formats.