Unicode Decode for Weasy Print

Question

Trying to build a simple Weasy Print Application with Django

Made a little function at views.py:

def generate_pdf(request):
    # Model data
    students = Student.objects.all().order_by('last_name')
    context = {
                'invoice_id': 18001,
                'street_name': 'Rue 76',
                'postal_code': '3100',
                'city': 'Washington',
                'customer_name': 'John Cooper',
                'customer_mail': 'customer@customer.at',
                'amount': 1339.99,
                'today': 'Today',
                }

    # Rendered
    html_string = render_to_string('pdf/invoice.html', context)
    html = HTML(string=html_string)
    result = html.write_pdf()

    # Creating http response
    response = HttpResponse(content_type='application/pdf;')
    response['Content-Disposition'] = 'inline; filename=list_people.pdf'
    response['Content-Transfer-Encoding'] = 'binary'
    with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(delete=True) as output:
        output.write(result)
        output.flush()
        output = open(output.name, 'r')
        response.write(output.read())

    return response

After running it I get a UnicodeDecodeError for the line "response.write(output.read())" This is my first time having such a problem, how can I fix that? Thanks!

Answer 1

Fixed it with simple changed 'r' to 'rb':

output = open(output.name, 'rb')

Answer 2

If you only want to return the generated PDF as http-response, the following solution is working for me. I don't know your template. I use {{ content.invoid_id }} for example to access the context values in template.

def generate_pdf(request):
    # Model data
    students = Student.objects.all().order_by('last_name')
    context = {
                'invoice_id': 18001,
                'street_name': 'Rue 76',
                'postal_code': '3100',
                'city': 'Washington',
                'customer_name': 'John Cooper',
                'customer_mail': 'customer@customer.at',
                'amount': 1339.99,
                'today': 'Today',
    }
    content = Context()
    content.update(context)
    template = loader.get_template('yourtemplate.html')

    # render and return
    html = template.render(context={'content':content}, request=request)
    response = HttpResponse(content_type='application/pdf')
    HTML(string=html, base_url=request.build_absolute_uri()).write_pdf(response)
    return response

No need for a temporary file. Hope this helps!

Edit: if you need the file bytes you can do it this way:

def generate_pdf(request):
    # Model data
    students = Student.objects.all().order_by('last_name')
    context = {
                'invoice_id': 18001,
                'street_name': 'Rue 76',
                'postal_code': '3100',
                'city': 'Washington',
                'customer_name': 'John Cooper',
                'customer_mail': 'customer@customer.at',
                'amount': 1339.99,
                'today': 'Today',
    }
    content = Context()
    content.update(context)
    template = loader.get_template('yourtemplate.html')
    html = template.render(context={'content':content})

    with TemporaryFile() as pdf:
        HTML(string=html, base_url=url).write_pdf(pdf)
        pdf.seek(0)
        # do what every you want with pdf.read())

Answer 3

which version of Python do u use? 2.x or 3.x?

Have u tried encode() and import the following module: from __future__ import unicode_literals