Python-PDFKit: HTML to PDF wrapper
==================================


.. image:: https://github.com/JazzCore/python-pdfkit/actions/workflows/main.yaml/badge.svg?branch=master
        :target: https://github.com/JazzCore/python-pdfkit/actions/workflows/main.yaml

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        :target: http://badge.fury.io/py/pdfkit

Python 3 wrapper for wkhtmltopdf utility to convert HTML to PDF using Webkit.

This is adapted version of `ruby PDFKit <https://github.com/pdfkit/pdfkit>`_ library, so big thanks to them!

Deprecation Warning
-------------------

This library has been deprecated to match the `wkhtmltopdf project status <https://wkhtmltopdf.org/status.html>`_.

Installation
------------

1. Install python-pdfkit:

.. code-block:: bash

	$ pip install pdfkit

2. Install wkhtmltopdf:

* Debian/Ubuntu:

.. code-block:: bash

	$ sudo apt-get install wkhtmltopdf

* macOS:

.. code-block:: bash

	$ brew install homebrew/cask/wkhtmltopdf

**Warning!** Version in debian/ubuntu repos have reduced functionality (because it compiled without the wkhtmltopdf QT patches), such as adding outlines, headers, footers, TOC etc. To use this options you should install static binary from `wkhtmltopdf <http://wkhtmltopdf.org/>`_ site or you can use `this script <https://github.com/JazzCore/python-pdfkit/blob/master/ci/before-script.sh>`_ (written for CI servers with Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic, but it could work on other Ubuntu/Debian versions).

* Windows and other options: check wkhtmltopdf `homepage <http://wkhtmltopdf.org/>`_ for binary installers

Usage
-----

For simple tasks:

.. code-block:: python

	import pdfkit

	pdfkit.from_url('http://google.com', 'out.pdf')
	pdfkit.from_file('test.html', 'out.pdf')
	pdfkit.from_string('Hello!', 'out.pdf')

You can pass a list with multiple URLs or files:

.. code-block:: python

	pdfkit.from_url(['google.com', 'yandex.ru', 'engadget.com'], 'out.pdf')
	pdfkit.from_file(['file1.html', 'file2.html'], 'out.pdf')

Also you can pass an opened file:

.. code-block:: python

    with open('file.html') as f:
        pdfkit.from_file(f, 'out.pdf')

If you wish to further process generated PDF, you can read it to a variable:

.. code-block:: python

    # Without output_path, PDF is returned for assigning to a variable
    pdf = pdfkit.from_url('http://google.com')

You can specify all wkhtmltopdf `options <http://wkhtmltopdf.org/usage/wkhtmltopdf.txt>`_. You can drop '--' in option name. If option without value, use *None, False* or *''* for dict value:. For repeatable options (incl. allow, cookie, custom-header, post, postfile, run-script, replace) you may use a list or a tuple. With option that need multiple values (e.g. --custom-header Authorization secret) we may use a 2-tuple (see example below).

.. code-block:: python

	options = {
	    'page-size': 'Letter',
	    'margin-top': '0.75in',
	    'margin-right': '0.75in',
	    'margin-bottom': '0.75in',
	    'margin-left': '0.75in',
	    'encoding': "UTF-8",
	    'custom-header': [
	    	('Accept-Encoding', 'gzip')
	    ],
	    'cookie': [
	    	('cookie-empty-value', '""')
	    	('cookie-name1', 'cookie-value1'),
	    	('cookie-name2', 'cookie-value2'),
	    ],
	    'no-outline': None
	}

	pdfkit.from_url('http://google.com', 'out.pdf', options=options)

By default, PDFKit will run ``wkhtmltopdf`` with ``quiet`` option turned on, since in most cases output is not needed and can cause excessive memory usage and corrupted results. If need to get ``wkhtmltopdf`` output you should pass ``verbose=True`` to API calls:

.. code-block:: python

    pdfkit.from_url('google.com', 'out.pdf', verbose=True)

Due to wkhtmltopdf command syntax, **TOC** and **Cover** options must be specified separately. If you need cover before TOC, use ``cover_first`` option:

.. code-block:: python

	toc = {
	    'xsl-style-sheet': 'toc.xsl'
	}

	cover = 'cover.html'

	pdfkit.from_file('file.html', options=options, toc=toc, cover=cover)
	pdfkit.from_file('file.html', options=options, toc=toc, cover=cover, cover_first=True)

You can specify external CSS files when converting files or strings using *css* option.

**Warning** This is a workaround for `this bug <http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/issues/detail?id=144>`_ in wkhtmltopdf. You should try *--user-style-sheet* option first.

.. code-block:: python

    # Single CSS file
    css = 'example.css'
    pdfkit.from_file('file.html', options=options, css=css)

    # Multiple CSS files
    css = ['example.css', 'example2.css']
    pdfkit.from_file('file.html', options=options, css=css)

You can also pass any options through meta tags in your HTML:

.. code-block:: python

	body = """
	    <html>
	      <head>
	        <meta name="pdfkit-page-size" content="Legal"/>
	        <meta name="pdfkit-orientation" content="Landscape"/>
	      </head>
	      Hello World!
	      </html>
	    """

	pdfkit.from_string(body, 'out.pdf') #with --page-size=Legal and --orientation=Landscape

Configuration
-------------

Each API call takes an optional configuration parameter. This should be an instance of ``pdfkit.configuration()`` API call. It takes the configuration options as initial parameters. The available options are:

* ``wkhtmltopdf`` - the location of the ``wkhtmltopdf`` binary. By default ``pdfkit`` will attempt to locate this using ``which`` (on UNIX type systems) or ``where`` (on Windows).
* ``meta_tag_prefix`` - the prefix for ``pdfkit`` specific meta tags - by default this is ``pdfkit-``

Example - for when ``wkhtmltopdf`` is not on ``$PATH``:

.. code-block:: python

    config = pdfkit.configuration(wkhtmltopdf='/opt/bin/wkhtmltopdf')
    pdfkit.from_string(html_string, output_file, configuration=config)

Also you can use ``configuration()`` call to check if wkhtmltopdf is present in ``$PATH``:

.. code-block:: python

	try:
	  config = pdfkit.configuration()
	  pdfkit.from_string(html_string, output_file)
	except OSError:
	  #not present in PATH


Troubleshooting
---------------

Debugging issues with PDF generation
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If you struggling to generate correct PDF firstly you should check ``wkhtmltopdf`` output for some clues, you can get it by passing ``verbose=True`` to API calls:

.. code-block:: python

	pdfkit.from_url('http://google.com', 'out.pdf', verbose=True)

If you are getting strange results in PDF or some option looks like its ignored you should try to run ``wkhtmltopdf`` directly to see if it produces the same result. You can get CLI command by creating ``pdfkit.PDFKit`` class directly and then calling its ``command()`` method:

.. code-block:: python

	import pdfkit

	r = pdfkit.PDFKit('html', 'string', verbose=True)
	print(' '.join(r.command()))
	# try running wkhtmltopdf to create PDF
	output = r.to_pdf()

Common errors:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

- ``IOError: 'No wkhtmltopdf executable found'``:

  Make sure that you have wkhtmltopdf in your `$PATH` or set via custom configuration (see preceding section). *where wkhtmltopdf* in Windows or *which wkhtmltopdf* on Linux should return actual path to binary.

- ``IOError: 'Command Failed'``

  This error means that PDFKit was unable to process an input. You can try to directly run a command from error message and see what error caused failure (on some wkhtmltopdf versions this can be cause by segmentation faults)