MyPDFKit

Create PDFs using plain old HTML+CSS. Uses wkhtmltopdf on the back-end which renders HTML using Webkit.

Supported versions

  • Ruby 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 3.0, 3.1
  • Rails 4.2, 5.2, 6.0, 6.1, 7.0

Install

MyPDFKit

gem install my_pdfkit

wkhtmltopdf

  1. Install by hand (recommended):

    https://github.com/pdfkit/pdfkit/wiki/Installing-WKHTMLTOPDF

  2. Try using the wkhtmltopdf-binary-edge gem (mac + linux i386)

    gem install wkhtmltopdf-binary

    Note: The automated installer has been removed.

Usage

# MyPDFKit.new takes the HTML and any options for wkhtmltopdf
# run `wkhtmltopdf --extended-help` for a full list of options
kit = MyPDFKit.new(html, :page_size => 'Letter')
kit.stylesheets << '/path/to/css/file'

# Get an inline PDF
pdf = kit.to_pdf

# Save the PDF to a file
file = kit.to_file('/path/to/save/pdf')

# MyPDFKit.new can optionally accept a URL or a File.
# Stylesheets can not be added when source is provided as a URL or File.
kit = MyPDFKit.new('http://google.com')
kit = MyPDFKit.new(File.new('/path/to/html'))

# Add any kind of option through meta tags
MyPDFKit.new('<html><head><meta name="pdfkit-page_size" content="Letter"')
MyPDFKit.new('<html><head><meta name="pdfkit-cookie cookie_name1" content="cookie_value1"')
MyPDFKit.new('<html><head><meta name="pdfkit-cookie cookie_name2" content="cookie_value2"')

Resolving relative URLs and protocols

If the source HTML has relative URLs (/images/cat.png) or protocols (//example.com/site.css) that need to be resolved, you can pass :root_url and :protocol options to MyPDFKit:

MyPDFKit.new(html, root_url: 'http://mysite.com/').to_file
# or:
MyPDFKit.new(html, protocol: 'https').to_file

Using cookies in scraping

If you want to pass a cookie to pdfkit to scrape a website, you can pass it in a hash:

kit = MyPDFKit.new(url, cookie: {cookie_name: :cookie_value})
kit = MyPDFKit.new(url, [:cookie, :cookie_name1] => :cookie_val1, [:cookie, :cookie_name2] => :cookie_val2)

Configuration

If you're on Windows or you would like to use a specific wkhtmltopdf you installed, you will need to tell MyPDFKit where the binary is. MyPDFKit will try to intelligently guess at the location of wkhtmltopdf by running the command which wkhtmltopdf. If you are on Windows, want to point MyPDFKit to a different binary, or are having trouble with getting MyPDFKit to find your binary, please manually configure the wkhtmltopdf location. You can configure MyPDFKit like so:

# config/initializers/pdfkit.rb
MyPDFKit.configure do |config|
  config.wkhtmltopdf = '/path/to/wkhtmltopdf'
  config.default_options = {
    :page_size => 'Legal',
    :print_media_type => true
  }
  # Use only if your external hostname is unavailable on the server.
  config.root_url = "http://localhost"
  config.verbose = false
end

Middleware

MyPDFKit comes with a middleware that allows users to get a PDF view of any page on your site by appending .pdf to the URL.

Middleware Setup

Non-Rails Rack apps

# in config.ru
require 'my_pdfkit'
use MyPDFKit::Middleware

Rails apps

# in application.rb(Rails3) or environment.rb(Rails2)
require 'pdfkit'
config.middleware.use MyPDFKit::Middleware

With MyPDFKit options

# options will be passed to MyPDFKit.new
config.middleware.use MyPDFKit::Middleware, :print_media_type => true

With conditions to limit routes that can be generated in pdf

# conditions can be regexps (either one or an array)
config.middleware.use MyPDFKit::Middleware, {}, :only => %r[^/public]
config.middleware.use MyPDFKit::Middleware, {}, :only => [%r[^/invoice], %r[^/public]]

# conditions can be strings (either one or an array)
config.middleware.use MyPDFKit::Middleware, {}, :only => '/public'
config.middleware.use MyPDFKit::Middleware, {}, :only => ['/invoice', '/public']

# conditions can be regexps (either one or an array)
config.middleware.use MyPDFKit::Middleware, {}, :except => [%r[^/prawn], %r[^/secret]]

# conditions can be strings (either one or an array)
config.middleware.use MyPDFKit::Middleware, {}, :except => ['/secret']

With conditions to force download

# force download with attachment disposition
config.middleware.use MyPDFKit::Middleware, {}, :disposition => 'attachment'
# conditions can force a filename
config.middleware.use MyPDFKit::Middleware, {}, :disposition => 'attachment; filename=report.pdf'

Saving the generated .pdf to disk

Setting the MyPDFKit-save-pdf header will cause MyPDFKit to write the generated .pdf to the file indicated by the value of the header.

For example:

headers['MyPDFKit-save-pdf'] = 'path/to/saved.pdf'

Will cause the .pdf to be saved to path/to/saved.pdf in addition to being sent back to the client. If the path is not writable/non-existent the write will fail silently. The MyPDFKit-save-pdf header is never sent back to the client.

Troubleshooting

  • Single thread issue: In development environments it is common to run a single server process. This can cause issues when rendering your pdf requires wkhtmltopdf to hit your server again (for images, js, css). This is because the resource requests will get blocked by the initial request and the initial request will be waiting on the resource requests causing a deadlock.

This is usually not an issue in a production environment. To get around this issue you may want to run a server with multiple workers like Passenger or try to embed your resources within your HTML to avoid extra HTTP requests.

Example solution (rails / bundler), add unicorn to the development group in your Gemfile gem 'unicorn' then run bundle. Next, add a file config/unicorn.conf with

    worker_processes 3

Then to run the app unicorn_rails -c config/unicorn.conf (from rails_root)

  • Resources aren't included in the PDF: Images, CSS, or JavaScript does not seem to be downloading correctly in the PDF. This is due to the fact that wkhtmltopdf does not know where to find those files. Make sure you are using absolute paths (start with forward slash) to your resources. If you are using MyPDFKit to generate PDFs from a raw HTML source make sure you use complete paths (either file paths or urls including the domain). In restrictive server environments the root_url configuration may be what you are looking for change your asset host.

  • Mangled output in the browser: Be sure that your HTTP response headers specify "content-type: application/pdf"

Note on Patches/Pull Requests

  • Fork the project.
  • Setup your development environment with: gem install bundler; bundle install
  • Make your feature addition or bug fix.
  • Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
  • Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
  • Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Copyright (c) 2010 Jared Pace. See LICENSE for details.