XHTML2PDF
The current release of xhtml2pdf is xhtml2pdf 0.2b1 which is a beta that has
Python 3 support. As with all open-source software, its use in production depends
on many factors, so be aware that you may find issues in some cases.
Big thanks to everyone
who has worked on this project so far and to those who help maintain it.
What else can you use instead?
Go use WeasyPrint, the codebase is pretty, it has a different features, and it
does a lot of what xhtml2pdf does and it is easier to use in many circumstances.
Documentation?
xhtml2pdf has some documentation, and we could use your help improving it.
A good place to start is doc/usage.rst.
This project is community-led! To strengthen it, please hang out on IRC #xhtml2pdf (Freenode)
or join our maling list.
Call for testing
This project is heavily dependent on getting its test coverage up!
Currently, Python 3 support is being worked on and many refactors and suggestions are potentially coming in.
Furthermore, parts of the codebase could do well with cleanups and refactoring.
If you benefit from xhtml2pdf, perhaps look at the test coverage and identify parts that are yet untouched.
About
xhtml2pdf is a html2pdf converter using the ReportLab Toolkit,
the HTML5lib and pyPdf. It supports HTML 5 and CSS 2.1 (and some of CSS 3).
It is completely written in pure Python so it is platform independent.
The main benefit of this tool that a user with Web skills like HTML and CSS
is able to generate PDF templates very quickly without learning new
technologies.
Installation
This is a typical Python library and is installed using pip:
pip install xhtml2pdf
To obtain the latest experimental version that has Python 3 support, please
use a prerelease:
pip install --pre xhtml2pdf
Requirements
Python 2.7+. Only Python 3.4+ is tested and guaranteed to work.
All additional requirements are listed in requirements.txt file and are
installed automatically using the pip install xhtml2pdf method.
Development environment
If you don't have it, install pip, the python package installer:
sudo easy_install pip
For more information about pip refer to http://www.pip-installer.org/.
I will recommend using virtualenv for development. This is great to have separate environment for
each project, keeping the dependencies for multiple projects separated:
sudo pip install virtualenv
For more information about virtualenv refer to http://www.virtualenv.org/
Create virtualenv for the project. This can be inside the project directory, but cannot be under
version control:
virtualenv --distribute xhtml2pdfenv --python=python2
Activate your virtualenv:
source xhtml2pdfenv/bin/activate
Later to deactivate use:
deactivate
Next step will be to install/upgrade dependencies from requirements.txt file:
pip install -r requirements.txt
Run tests to check your configuration:
nosetests --with-coverage
You should have a log with success status:
Ran 36 tests in 0.322s
OK
Python integration
Some simple demos of how to integrate xhtml2pdf into
a Python program may be found here: test/simple.py
Running tests
Two different test suites are available to assert xhtml2pdf works reliably:
Unit tests. The unit testing framework is currently minimal, but is being
improved on a daily basis (contributions welcome). They should run in the
expected way for Python's unittest module, i.e.:
nosetests --with-coverage (or your personal favorite)
Functional tests. Thanks to mawe42's super cool work, a full functional
test suite lives in testrender/.
Contact
History
This are the major milestones and the maintainers of the project:
2000-2007, commercial project, spirito.de, written by Dirk Holtwich
2007-2010 Dirk Holtwich (project named "Pisa", project released as GPL)
2010-2012 Dirk Holtwick (project named "xhtml2pdf", changed license to Apache)
2012-2015 Chris Glass (@chrisglass)
2015-2016 Benjamin Bach (@benjaoming)
2016-Current Sam Spencer (@LegoStormtroopr)
For more history, see the CHANGELOG.
License
Copyright 2010 Dirk Holtwick, holtwick.it
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.