How to create PDF files¶
This document explains how to output PDF files dynamically using Django views. This is made possible by the excellent, open-source ReportLab Python PDF library.
The advantage of generating PDF files dynamically is that you can create customized PDFs for different purposes – say, for different users or different pieces of content.
For example, Django was used at kusports.com to generate customized, printer-friendly NCAA tournament brackets, as PDF files, for people participating in a March Madness contest.
Install ReportLab¶
The ReportLab library is available on PyPI. A user guide (not
coincidentally, a PDF file) is also available for download.
You can install ReportLab with pip
:
$ python -m pip install reportlab
...\> py -m 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 API
acts on file-like objects, and Django’s FileResponse
objects accept file-like objects.
Here’s a “Hello World” example:
import io
from django.http import FileResponse
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
def some_view(request):
# Create a file-like buffer to receive PDF data.
buffer = io.BytesIO()
# Create the PDF object, using the buffer 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, and we're done.
p.showPage()
p.save()
# FileResponse sets the Content-Disposition header so that browsers
# present the option to save the file.
buffer.seek(0)
return FileResponse(buffer, as_attachment=True, filename='hello.pdf')
The code and comments should be self-explanatory, but a few things deserve a mention:
- The response will automatically set the MIME type application/pdf based on the filename extension. This tells browsers that the document is a PDF file, rather than an HTML file or a generic application/octet-stream binary content.
- When
as_attachment=True
is passed toFileResponse
, it sets the appropriateContent-Disposition
header and that tells web browsers to pop-up a dialog box prompting/confirming how to handle the document even if a default is set on the machine. If theas_attachment
parameter is omitted, browsers will handle the PDF using whatever program/plugin they’ve been configured to use for PDFs. - You can provide an arbitrary
filename
parameter. It’ll be used by browsers in the “Save as…” dialog. - You can hook into the ReportLab API: The same buffer passed as the first
argument to
canvas.Canvas
can be fed to theFileResponse
class. - Note that all subsequent PDF-generation methods are called on the PDF
object (in this case,
p
) – not onbuffer
. - Finally, it’s important to call
showPage()
andsave()
on the PDF file.
Note
ReportLab is not thread-safe. Some of our users have reported odd issues with building PDF-generating Django views that are accessed by many people at the same time.
Other formats¶
Notice that there isn’t a lot in these examples that’s PDF-specific – just the
bits using reportlab
. You can use a similar technique to generate any
arbitrary format that you can find a Python library for. Also see
How to create CSV output for another example and some techniques you can use
when generated text-based formats.
See also
Django Packages provides a comparison of packages that help generate PDF files from Django.