Pyladoc

Description

Pyladoc is a Python package for programmatically generating HTML and PDF/LaTeX output. This package specifically targets applications where reports or results with Pandas tables and Matplotlib figures are generated to be displayed as a website and as a PDF document without involving any manual formatting steps.

This package focuses on the "Document in Code" approach for cases where a lot of calculations and data handling is done but not a lot of document text needs to be displayed. The multiline string capability of Python handles this very well. In comparison to "Code in Document" templates, Python tools support this approach out of the box—similar to docstrings.

LaTeX is used as the backend for PDF generation. There are excellent engines for rendering HTML to PDF, but even if there is no requirement for accurate typesetting, placing programmatically generated content of variable composition and element sizes on fixed-size pages without manual intervention is a hard problem where LaTeX is superior.

Example outputs

• HTML: test_html_render1.html
• PDF: test_latex_render1.pdf (LaTeX)

The documents are generated by the script tests/test_rendering_example1_doc.py.

Supported primitives

• Text (can be Markdown or HTML formatted)
• Headings
• Tables (Pandas, Markdown or HTML)
• Matplotlib figures
• LaTeX equations (block or inline)
• Named references for figures, tables, and equations

Key Features

• HTML and PDF/LaTeX rendering of the same document
• Single file output including figures
• Figure and equation embedding in HTML by inline SVG, SVG in Base64, or PNG in Base64
• Figure embedding in LaTeX as PGF/TikZ
• Tested on Linux and Windows

Usage Scenarios

• Web services
• Report generation for lab equipment

Installation

It can be installed with pip:

pip install pyladoc

As well as with conda:

conda install conda-forge::pyladoc

Dependencies

Pyladoc depends on the markdown package.

Optional dependencies are:

• Matplotlib Python package for rendering LaTeX equations for HTML output
• LaTeX for exporting to PDF or exporting Matplotlib figures to LaTeX (PGF/TikZ rendering)
• Pandas and Jinja2 for rendering Pandas tables
• Matplotlib for rendering Matplotlib figures (obviously)

For the included template, the miktex LaTeX distribution works on Windows and the following LaTeX setup works on Ubuntu (both tested in CI):

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y texlive-latex-extra texlive-fonts-recommended lmodern texlive-xetex texlive-science

Usage

It is easy to use, as the following example code shows:

import pyladoc
import pandas as pd

doc = pyladoc.DocumentWriter()

doc.add_markdown("""
    # Example
    This is inline LaTeX: $$\\lambda$$

    This is a LaTeX block with a number:
    $$
    \\label{eq:test1}
    \\lambda_{\text{mix}} = \\sum_{i=1}^{n} \\frac{x_i \\lambda_i}{\\sum_{j=1}^{n} x_j \\Phi_{ij}}
    $$

    This is an example table. The table @table:pandas_example shows some random data.
    """)

some_data = {
    'Row1': ["Line1", "Line2", "Line3"],
    'Row2': [120, 100, 110],
    'Row3': ['12 g/km', '> 150 g/km', '110 g/km']
}
df = pd.DataFrame(some_data)
doc.add_table(df, 'This is a pandas example table', 'pandas_example')

html_code = doc.to_html()
print(html_code)

doc.to_pdf('test.pdf')

Contributing

Contributions are welcome; please open an issue or submit a pull request on GitHub.

Developer Guide

To get started with developing the pyladoc package, follow these steps.

First, clone the repository to your local machine using Git:

git clone https://github.com/Nonannet/pyladoc.git
cd pyladoc

It's recommended to set up a venv:

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # On Windows use `.venv\Scripts\activate`

Install the package and development dependencies while keeping files in the current directory:

pip install -e .[dev]

Ensure that everything is set up correctly by running the tests:

pytest

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.