Introduction Rails Plugin: ActiveFPDF

This rails plugin ActiveFPDF will allow very easy generation of i18n PDF documents (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Central Europe, Cyrillic, Western Europe, Greek, Turkish, Hebrew, Baltic, Vietnamese and Thai Language) through the use of template file ".rfpdf" views for rails/pdf and optinal layout file ".rb" for pdf, and rely on the cool library Ruby FPDF: http://zeropluszero.com/software/fpdf/. This Plugin includes the library and is for Rails 2.0.2 and Rails 2.1.

Install the plugin

ruby script/plugin install http://cnruby.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/rails-plugins/active_fpdf/vendor/plugins/active_fpdf/

rake active_fpdf:init

Prerequisite

• Rails 2.1, But NOT for Rails 2.2 and above, Please use Prawn und Prawnto
• create the directories for rails application
• app/views/{View Name}/pdfs # template files for rails/pdf
• edit the config/environment.rb for Rails 1.2.3

    Mime::Type.register "application/pdf", :pdf

or edit the config/initializers/mime_types.rb for Rails 2.0.2 or for Rails 2.1

    Mime::Type.register "application/pdf", :pdf

• save images for pdf files to this directory(optional)
• public/images
• save new fonts to the directory(optional)
• app/views/fonts

Developing the rails code with the plugin

• edit controller file, example the code for controller method index():

    format.pdf { render :layout=>false, :template => "{View Name}/pdfs/index" } # index.rfpdf

• create a template file for rails/pdf, example for controller pages:

   app/views/{View Name}/pdfs/show.rfpdf

• finish

Browsing the results

• call the method index: http://localhost:3000/{View Name}.pdf

Demo download and use

• svn co http://cnruby.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/rails-plugins/active_fpdf/
• cd active_fpdf
• ruby script/server
• http://localhost:3000/pages and http://localhost:3000/pages.pdf

Example for more complex development

• edit controller file, example the code for controller method show():

http://cnruby.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/rails-plugins/active_fpdf/app/controllers/pages_controlller.txt

• create a template for rails/pdf, example for controller pages:

http://cnruby.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/rails-plugins/active_fpdf/app/views/pages/pdfs/show-03.rfpdf

• edit app/helpers/application_helper.rb, example

     require 'pdf_layout_03'

• create a layout file for pdf, exmaple the layout file pdf_layout_03.rb for pdf

http://cnruby.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/rails-plugins/active_fpdf/app/helpers/pdf_layout_03.rb

• finish

Error possibility for developing rails codes

• The file encoding is not UTF-8.
• An image about layout file for pdf exists not.
• A new font file exists not.
• If we change a layout file for pdf, must restart webserver.
• Any false code exists in the files:
• a template file for rails/pdf
• a layout file for pdf
• Whether use a parameter ":layout=>false" in the method render().

Express command for rails example

• rails use_fpdf && cd use_fpdf
• ruby script/plugin install http://cnruby.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/rails-plugins/active_fpdf/ vendor/plugins/active_fpdf
• vi config/environment.rb
• vi config/database.yml
• Rails 1.2.3
• ruby script/generate scaffold_resource Page
• Rails >=2.0
• ruby script/generate scaffold Page
• mkdir app/views/pages/pdfs
• vi db/migrate/001_create_pages.rb
• rake db:migrate
• vi app/controllers/pages_controller.rb
• vi app/views/pages/pdfs/show.rfpdf
• vi app/views/pages/new.rhtml
• ruby script/server
• http://localhost:3000/pages/new
• http://localhost:3000/pages/1.pdf

Known problems

• Show bookmark is not correct for i18n.

Thnaks

• http://info.michael-simons.eu/2008/06/04/pdfwriter-and-ruby-on-rails-21/
• http://ar-code.lighthouseapp.com/projects/34/tickets/166-cannot-bootstrap-undefined-method-register_template_handler-for-actionview-base-class