django-pdf-view 1.0.6

Django app for seamlessly displaying and downloading PDF documents in browser.

django-pdf-view

Purpose

The primary purpose of this package is to streamline the creation of PDF documents and displaying those PDFs in the browser or downloading them based on URL parameters. The package provides a robust foundation of HTML and CSS for PDF page(s) layout. Simply create an HTML template(s) for your PDF page(s), then define a view that inherits from PDFView and implements the create_pdf method that returns a PDF object with the desired content. This allows developers to focus on defining the content and custom styles of their PDF pages without worrying about the underlying layout complexities.

Key Features

• Predefined Page Layout: The package includes built-in HTML and CSS for structuring PDF pages.

• Flexible PDF Content and Styling: Easily create your own HTML templates for PDF pages and customize the look of your PDFs by providing your own CSS.

• PDF View: Easily switch between viewing the PDF, HTML content and downloading the PDF file by appending URL parameters.

Prerequisites

• wkhtmltopdf command line tools to render HTML into PDF:

  sudo apt-get install wkhtmltopdf  # Linux
  

  brew install wkhtmltopdf          # macOS
  

  For Windows, download the installer from the wkhtmltopdf website.

Installation

pip install django-pdf-view

Configuration

Add django-pdf-view to your INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'django_pdf_view',
    ...
]

Try it out

1. Add the following URL pattern to your project's urls.py:

   from django.urls import path
   from django_pdf_view import views
   
   urlpatterns = [
       path(
           'singlepage-pdf/',
           views.SinglepageExamplePDFView.as_view(),
           name='singlepage_pdf'
       ),
       path(
           'multipage-pdf/',
           views.MultipageExamplePDFView.as_view(),
           name='multipage_pdf'
       ),
   ]
   

   
   

2. Run the development server:

   python3 manage.py runserver
   

   
   

3. Visit PDF examples in your browser:

   • Singlepage PFD: http://127.0.0.1:8000/singlepage-pdf
   • Multipage PFD: http://127.0.0.1:8000/multipage-pdf
   • Append ?html=true to the URL to view the HTML content.
   • Append ?download=true to the URL to download the PDF file.

Usage

In order to create your own PDFs, you need to implement your own template and view.

1. Create a new template to define the content of your PDF page:

   <!-- my_app/templates/my_app/pdf_page.html -->
   {% load css %}   
   
   <style>
       {{ 'my_app/style/pdf_page.css'|css }}
   </style>
   
   <h1 class="my-title">{{ title }}</h1>
   <p class="my-text">{{ text }}</p>
   <p class="my-text">Additional PDF page text.</p>
   

   Breakdown:

   • We render the content of a custom CSS file (my_app/style/pdf_page.css) in the <style> tag.
   • We define the content of our PDF page using HTML tags. Some of this content is passed as context to the template (variables title and text).
   • We use the my-title and my-text classes to style our content. These classes are defined in the custom CSS file (my_app/static/my_app/style/pdf_page.css) that we rendered in the <style> tag.
     
     

2. Create a new view to render the PDF:

   # my_app/views.py
   
   from django_pdf_view.pdf import PDF
   from django_pdf_view.services import create_pdf
   from django_pdf_view.views.pdf_view import PDFView
   
   
   class MyPDFView(PDFView):
   
        def create_pdf(self) -> PDF:
            return create_pdf(
                template_name='my_app/pdf_page.html',
                title='My PDF',
                context={
                    'title': 'My PDF Single Page Title',
                    'text': 'My PDF Single Page Text',
                }
            )
   

   Breakdown:

   • We create a new view class MyPDFView that extends PDFView.
   • We implement abstract method create_pdf to return a simple single-page PDF object by providing a template_name for the PDF page, a title (optional) for the PDF document, and a context (optional) for the PDF page template.
     
     

3. Add the new URL pattern to your project's urls.py:

   from django.urls import path
   from my_app.views import MyPDFView
   
   urlpatterns = [
        ...
        path('my-pdf/', MyPDFView.as_view(), name='my_pdf'),
        ...
   ]
   

   
   

4. Visit http://localhost:8000/my-pdf/ in your browser.

   • To download the PDF, append ?download=true to the URL: http://localhost:8000/my-pdf/?download=true
   • To view the HTML version, append ?html=true to the URL: http://localhost:8000/my-pdf/?html=true
     
     

Advanced Usage

To have more control over the PDF generation process, instead of using the create_pdf helper function, you can create a PDF object manually and add pages to it:

from django_pdf_view.pdf import PDF

pdf = PDF(
    template_name='my_app/pdf.html',
    title='My PDF Document',
    language='rs',
    filename='my-pdf.pdf',
)
# Add first page:
pdf.add_page(
    template_name='my_app/pdf_page_1.html',
    with_wrapper_html=False,
    context={
        'title': 'Page 1 Title',
        'text': 'Page 1 Text',
    }
)
# Add second page:
pdf.add_page(
    template_name='my_app/pdf_page_2.html',
    with_wrapper_html=False,
    context={
        'title': 'Page 2 Title',
        'text': 'Page 2 Text',
    }
)

Breakdown:

• We create a new PDF object with a custom template_name (optional) for the document, a title (optional) for the document, a language (optional) for the document, and a filename (optional) for the PDF file.
• We add two pages to the PDF object by providing a template_name for each page, with_wrapper_html=False (optional) to omit wrapper HTML that is added to each page, and a context (optional) for each page template.

Default template context

• PDF document:
  • pages_html: HTML content of all pages.
  • title: Title of the PDF document (used in <title> tag).
• PDF page:
  • title: Title of the PDF page.
  • page_number: Number of the PDF page.
  • total_pages: Total number of pages in the PDF document.

Template tags & filters

There are some useful template tags and filters provided by the django-pdf-view package that can be used in your PDF templates:

• css template filter

  {% load css %}   
     
  <style>
     {{ 'path/to/style.css'|css }}
  </style>
  

• svg template tag

  {% load svg %}
  
  {% svg 'path/to/image.svg' %}
  

Custom template for PDF document

If we decide to use our own template for the PDF document, we need to include {{ pages_html|safe }} in the template to render the content of the PDF pages.

Custom CSS for PDF document

To add some global styles to the PDF document that will be applied to all pages, we can define it directly in <style> (inside <head> tag) in the PDF document template. Alternatively, we can define it in a separate CSS file and render it in the template using the {{ 'my_app/style/pdf.css'|css }} template tag.