Play 2.3.x PDF : Basic example for generating PDF documents dynamically from Play Application with the help of play2-pdf module

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In this blog I have created a basic example for generating PDF documents dynamically from Play Application with the help of play2-pdf module

Play 2.3.x PDF module: This module helps generating PDF documents dynamically from your Play! web application. It simply renders your HTML- and CSS-based templates to PDF. It is based on the Flying Saucer library, which in turn uses iText for PDF generation.

Usage

You can use a standard Play! Scala template like this one:

@(message: String)

@main("Play!ng PDF") {
    Image: <img src="/public/images/favicon.png"/><br/>
    Hello world! <br/>
    @message <br/>
}

Check the below template list for more complex template design:

Then this template, after having imported it.innove.PdfGenerator, can simply be rendered as:

    def letter: Action[AnyContent] = Action { implicit request =>
        Ok(PdfGenerator.toBytes(views.html.letter("Play!ng PDF"), host)).as("application/pdf")
    }

Template rules

Templates must generate XHTML.

If the template is using an image, stylesheet, etc., it usually is loaded via an http call. The PDF modules tries to optimize that resource loading: If you specify the URI as a path into the classpath of your Play! app, the resource is loaded directly instead. See the above sample template for an example.

Of course you can link to CSS files in your class path also, but be aware not to use the media="screen"qualifier.

Fonts you use must be explicitely packaged with your app.

<html>
    <head>
        <style type="text/css"><!--
        body {
            ...
            font-family: FreeSans;
        }
        -->style> 
    head>
    <body>
        ...
    body>
html>

Since the FreeSans font is not available to the java VM, you are required to add the corresponding font file, “FreeSans.ttf” to your Play! app. You can add your fonts with PdfGenerator.loadLocalFonts method, for example if you put the font in the folder /conf/fonts you load the font with:

PdfGenerator.loadLocalFonts(new String[]{"fonts/FreeSans.ttf"})

Used Play2-PDF Module to generate PDF from HTML template
Embedded JS & CSS libraries with WebJars
Integrating with a CSS framework (Twitter Bootstrap 3.1.1)
Bootswatch-Cerulean with Twitter Bootstrap 3.1.1 to improve the look and feel of the application

Instructions

To run the Play Framework, you need JDK 6 or later
Install Typesafe Activator if you do not have it already. You can get it from here
Execute ./activator clean compile to build the product
Execute ./activator run to execute the product
playing-pdf-module should now be accessible at localhost:9000

References

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