ReportLab PDF Generation User Guide

1 ReportLab PDF LibraryUser GuideReportLab Version generated on 2020/02/05 20:17:45 ReportLabWimbletech35 Wimbledon Hill RoadLondon SW19 7NB, UKTable of contents2 Table of contents6 Chapter 1 Introduction .. About this document .. What is the ReportLab PDF Library? .. ReportLab 's commercial software .. What is Python? .. Acknowledgements .. Installation and Setup .. Getting Involved .. Site Configuration .. Learning More About Python .. Goals for the release series10 Chapter 2 Graphics and Text with pdfgen .. Basic Concepts .. More about the Canvas .. Drawing Operations .. The tools: the "draw" operations .. The toolbox: the "state change" operations .. Other canvas methods.. Coordinates (default user space) .. Colors .. Color space checking .. Color Overprinting .. Standard fonts and text objects .. Text object methods .. Paths and Lines .. Rectangles, circles, ellipses.

2 Bezier curves .. Path object methods .. Further Reading: The ReportLab Graphics Library47 Chapter 3 Fonts and encodings .. Unicode and UTF8 are the default input encodings .. Automatic output font substitutionUser GuideTable of contentsPage 2 .. Using non-standard Type 1 fonts .. Standard Single-Byte Font Encodings .. TrueType Font Support .. Asian Font Support .. RenderPM tests54 Chapter 4 Exposing PDF Special Capabilities .. Forms .. Links and Destinations .. Outline Trees .. Page Transition Effects .. Internal File Annotations .. Encryption .. Interactive Forms64 Chapter 5 PLATYPUS - Page Layout and Typography Using Scripts .. Design Goals .. Getting started .. Flowables .. Guidelines for flowable positioning .. Frames .. Documents and Templates71 Chapter 6 Paragraphs .. Using Paragraph Styles .. Paragraph XML Markup Tags .. Intra-paragraph markup.

3 Bullets and Paragraph Numbering83 Chapter 7 Tables and TableStyles .. Table User Methods .. TableStyle .. TableStyle User Methods .. TableStyle Commands90 Chapter 8 Programming Flowables .. DocAssign(self, var, expr, life='forever') .. DocExec(self, stmt, lifetime='forever')User GuideTable of contentsPage DocPara(self, expr, format=None, style=None, klass=None, escape=True) .. DocAssert(self, cond, format=None) .. DocIf(self, cond, thenBlock, elseBlock=[]) .. DocWhile(self, cond, whileBlock)91 Chapter 9 Other Useful Flowables .. Preformatted(text, style, bulletText=None, dedent=0,maxLineLength=None, splitChars=None, newLineChars=None) .. XPreformatted(text, style, bulletText=None, dedent=0, frags=None) .. Image(filename, width=None, height=None) .. Spacer(width, height) .. PageBreak() .. CondPageBreak(height) .. KeepTogether(flowables) .. TableOfContents() .. SimpleIndex().

4 ListFlowable(),ListItem() .. BalancedColumns()97 Chapter 10 writing your own Flowable Objects .. A very simple Flowable .. Modifying a Built in Flowable100 Chapter 11 Graphics .. Introduction .. General Concepts .. Charts .. Labels .. Axes .. Bar Charts .. Line Charts .. Line Plots .. Pie Charts .. Legends .. Shapes .. Widgets132 Appendix A ReportLab Demos .. OdysseyUser GuideTable of contentsPage 4 .. Standard Fonts and Colors .. Py2pdf .. Gadflypaper .. PythonpointUser GuideTable of contentsPage 5 Chapter 1 About this documentThis document is an introduction to the ReportLab PDF library. Some previous programming experience ispresumed and familiarity with the Python Programming language is recommended. If you are new to Python,we tell you in the next section where to go for manual does not cover 100% of the features, but should explain all the main concepts and help you getstarted, and point you at other learning resources.

5 After working your way through this, you should be readyto begin writing programs to produce sophisticated this chapter, we will cover the groundwork: What is ReportLab all about, and why should I use it? What is Python? How do I get everything set up and running?We need your help to make sure this manual is complete and helpful. Please send any feedback to our usermailing list, which is signposted from What is the ReportLab PDF Library?This is a software library that lets you directly create documents in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF)using the Python programming language. It also creates charts and data graphics in various bitmap and vectorformats as well as is the global standard for electronic documents. It supports high-quality printing yet is totally portableacross platforms, thanks to the freely available Acrobat Reader. Any application which previously generatedhard copy reports or driving a printer can benefit from making PDF documents instead; these can be archived,emailed, placed on the web, or printed out the old-fashioned way.

6 However, the PDF file format is a complexindexed binary format which is impossible to type directly. The PDF format specification is more than 600pages long and PDF files must provide precise byte offsets -- a single extra character placed anywhere in avalid PDF document can render it invalid. This makes it harder to generate than of the world's PDF documents have been produced by Adobe's Acrobat tools, or rivals such as JAWSPDF Creator, which act as 'print drivers'. Anyone wanting to automate PDF production would typically use aproduct like Quark, Word or Framemaker running in a loop with macros or plugins, connected to of several languages and products can be slow and somewhat ReportLab library directly creates PDF based on your graphics commands. There are no interveningsteps. Your applications can generate reports extremely fast - sometimes orders of magnitude faster than tra-ditional report - writing tools.

7 This approach is shared by several other libraries - PDFlib for C, iText for Java,iTextSharp for .NET and others. However, The ReportLab library differs in that it can work at much higherlevels, with a full featured engine for laying out documents complete with tables and addition, because you are writing a program in a powerful general purpose language, there are no restric-tions at all on where you get your data from, how you transform it, and the kind of output you can create. Andyou can reuse code across whole families of ReportLab library is expected to be useful in at least the following contexts: Dynamic PDF Generation on the web High-volume corporate reporting and database publishing An embeddable print engine for other applications, including a ' report language' so that userscan customize their own reports. This is particularly relevant to cross-platform apps which can-not rely on a consistent printing or previewing API on each operating system.

8 A 'build system' for complex documents with charts, tables and text such as management ac-counts, statistical reports and scientific papers Going from XML to PDF in one stepUser GuideChapter 1 IntroductionPage ReportLab 's commercial softwareThe ReportLab library forms the foundation of our commercial solution for PDF Generation , report MarkupLanguage (RML). This is available for evaluation on our web site with full documentation. We believe thatRML is the fastest and easiest way to develop rich PDF workflows. You work in a markup language at a sim-ilar level to HTML, using your favorite templating system to populate an RML document; then call ourrml2pdf API function to generate a PDF. It's what ReportLab staff use to build all of the solutions you can seeon Key differences: Fully documented with two manuals, a formal specification (the DTD) and extensive self-docu-menting tests. (By contrast, we try to make sure the open source documentation isn't wrong, butwe don't always keep up with the code) Work in high-level markup rather than constructing graphs of Python objects Requires no Python expertise - your colleagues may thank you after you've left!

9 ' Support for vector graphics and inclusion of other PDF documents Many more useful features expressed with a single tag, which would need a lot of coding in theopen source package Commercial support is includedWe ask open source developers to consider trying out RML where it is appropriate. You can register on oursite and try out a copy before buying. The costs are reasonable and linked to the volume of the project, andthe revenue helps us spend more time developing this What is Python?Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language. It is often compared to Tcl, Perl,Scheme or combines remarkable power with very clear syntax. It has modules, classes, exceptions, very highlevel dynamic data types, and dynamic typing. There are interfaces to many system calls and libraries, as wellas to various windowing systems (X11, Motif, Tk, Mac, MFC). New built-in modules are easily written in Cor C++.

10 Python is also usable as an extension language for applications that need a programmable is as old as Java and has been growing steadily in popularity for years; since our library first came outit has entered the mainstream. Many ReportLab library users are already Python devotees, but if you are not,we feel that the language is an excellent choice for document- Generation apps because of its expressivenessand ability to get data from is copyrighted but freely usable and distributable, even for commercial AcknowledgementsMany people have contributed to ReportLab . We would like to thank in particular (in alphabetical order):Albertas Agejevas, Alex Buck, Andre Reitz, Andrew Cutler, Andrew Mercer, Ben Echols, Benjamin Dumke,Benn B, Chad Miller, Chris Buergi, Chris Lee, Christian Jacobs, Dinu Gherman, Edward Greve, EricJohnson, Felix Labrecque, Fubu @ bitbucket, Gary Poster, Germ n M. Bravo, Guillaume Francois, HansBrand, Henning Vonbargen, Hosam Aly, Ian Stevens, James Martin-Collar, Jeff Bauer, Jerome Alet, JerryCasiano, Jorge Godoy, Keven D Smith, Kyle MacFarlane, Magnus Lie Hetland, Marcel Tromp, MariusGedminas, Mark de Wit, Matthew Duggan, Matthias Kirst, Matthias Klose, Max M, Michael Egorov,Michael Spector, Mike Folwell, Mirko Dziadzka, Moshe Wagner, Nate Silva, Paul McNett, Peter Johnson,PJACock, Publio da Costa Melo, Randolph Bentson, Robert Alsina, Robert H lzl, Robert Kern, Ron Peleg,Ruby Yocum, Simon King, Stephan Richter, Steve Halasz, Stoneleaf @ bitbucket, T Blatter, Tim Roberts,Tomasz Swiderski, Ty Sarna, Volker Haas, Yoann Roman, and many thanks go to Just van Rossum for his valuable assistance with font Wagner and Hosam Aly deserve a huge thanks for contributing to the RTL patch.