TooRendermonkey

PDF template generation plugin for Ruby on Rails

Master tracks Rails 3. Branch Rails 2 tracks >= Rails 2.3.5

This plugin allows the generation of pdf files from controllers using the pdf mime type. This plugin will not generate a pdf but will render the pages specified for the pdf format with the extension .pdf.erb as html and forward the request on to the RendermonkeyToo API which will generate this page as a PDF. This is useful for having a separate server generate PDF files from your Ruby on Rails application. This allows for custom PDF files to be generated for the specified page.

Installation as gem

gem install too_rendermonkey
rails generate too_rendermonkey

Installation as plugin

rails plugin install git://github.com/amkirwan/too_rendermonkey.git
rails generate too_rendermonkey

#In your Rails project Gemfile add
gem 'too_rendermonkey', :path=>'vendor/plugins/too_rendermonkey'

Generate will install a file in config/initializers/too_rendermonkey.rb. The following params must be specified in this file to generate PDFs using the RendermonkeyToo API.

URI of the RendermonkeyToo instance which is running
api_key given from the RendermonkeyToo API
hash_key (secret key) given from the RendermonkeyToo API. This key is used to hash all the params sent to the RendermonkeyToo API when generating a PDF. Keep this key secure.

Example

Setup the Rails initializer config/initializers/too_rendermonkey.rb after running script/generate too_rendermonkey. Use your API info from RendermonkeyToo to configure. Make sure to keep the hash_key secure. Anytime you edit this file you will need to restart the server.

TooRendermonkey.config = {
    :uri => "http://localhost:4567/generate",
    :api_key => "abcdefg",
    :hash_key => "abcdefg123456789"
}

In your controller within the action that you want to generate a PDF you would need to specify the following render :pdf, :pdf_template and :pdf_layout need to be specified

class ExampleController < ApplicationController
    def show
        respond_to do |format|
            format.html #index.html.erb
            format.pdf  do
               render :pdf  => "Phone List",
                      :pdf_layout => "reports.pdf.erb",
                      :pdf_template => "reports/phone_list.pdf.erb",
                      :render_options => {
                        :header_right => 'Page [page] of [toPage]',
                        :grayscale => true
                      }
            end
        end
    end
end

In your view code you can specify the PDF path like in the example below. This will generate a PDF request.

Department Phone List
<%= link_to "Web", phone_list_reports_path %>
<%= link_to "PDF", phone_list_reports_path(:pdf) %>

For the PDF templates you will need to include the css within the document so that it can be formatted correctly since the document is being sent to a server to be generated.

Use the RendermonkeyToo helper stylesheet_tag_pdf within your pdf_layout to accomplish this. Specify the name of the pdf file and it will automatically read in your css into the document.

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
        <%= stylesheet_tag_pdf "reports_pdf" %>
    </head>

The pdf_template can have links to partial .html.erb files so you do not need to duplicate all your pages. You must however add in a .html extension to any partials you are includeing.

<div class="list-wrap">
    <%= render(:partial => "col_one_subheading.html", :object => "Faculty") %>
    <div class="section-wrap">
        <%= render(:partial => "report_column_one.html", :object => @all_faculty_column_one)  %>
        <%= render(:partial => "report_column_two.html", :object => @all_faculty_column_two)  %>
        <%= render(:partial => "report_column_three.html", :object => @all_faculty_column_three)  %>
    </div>
</div>

Plugin Params - Troubleshooting

When generating a request the plugin sends the following params to the TooRendermonkey API

api_key (your api_key)
timestamp (Time request generated, iso8601)
page - (HTML to render to PDF)
name - (Name of PDF file) Only Param that is optional
signature - (SHA256 HMAC generated using your hash_key plus all the params of the current request )

If the request generated takes longer than 5 minutes to arrive at the Rendermonkey API server it will be rejected. This is to prevent someone from attempting to replay your request.

All of this will be handled for you by the plugin. If there are any errors with your params the Rendermonkey API will respond with a message stating the reason for failure.