Jinja-like for Pdf in Python

Question

I am looking for the best accurate tool for PDF in Python that works like Jinja does for HTML.

What are your suggestions?

Solution 1

As answered by jbochi, ReportLab is the foundation for almost all Python projects that generate PDF.

But for your needs you might want to check out Pisa / xhtml2pdf. You would generate your HTML with a Jinja template and then use Pisa to convert the HTML to PDF. Pisa is built on top of ReportLab.

Edit: another option I'd forgotten about is wkhtmltopdf

Solution 2

Have a look at ReportLab Toolkit.

You can use templates only with the commercial version, though.

Solution 3

There's now a new kid on the block called WeasyPrint.

Solution 4

I had exactly the same requirement as the OP. Unfortunately WeasyPrint wasn't a viable solution, because I needed very exact positioning and barcode support. After a few days of work I finished a reportlab XML wrapper with Jinja2 support.

The code can be found on GitHub including an example XML wich generates the following PDF.

Solution 5

What about python/jinja to rst/html and html/rst to pdf using either rst2pdf or pandoc.

Both of these have worked well for me but. like plaes, I may try Weasyprint in the future.

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Comments

[Mamane]

You're right and it is a problem since I would like to work from a template in pdf format.

[jbochi]

Maybe it's an overkill, but you could use Jinja to generate the text and the toolkit to convert the text to pdf.

[user1066101]

@jbochi: Not overkill, IMO. I think this solution works very well.

[Sos]

How do you actually write to pdf?

[Matteo]

the script above returns the source code, so use whichever latex compiler you prefer.

[Sos]

Yes, I found it in the meanwhile using pdflatex :)