Cannot get wkhtmltopdf to work in rails

Question

I am trying to use wicked_pdf in my rails 3 application. I have followed all the tutorials and I am getting this error:

Failed to execute:
"/usr/local/bin/wkhtmltopdf" -q        "file:////var/folders/_b/50kywsc97r95gvr9gy9nr6700000gn/T/wicked_pdf20130228-874-a51lgi.html" "/var/folders/_b/50kywsc97r95gvr9gy9nr6700000gn/T/wicked_pdf_generated_file20130228-874-1ihqg74.pdf"

I know that wkhtmltopdf exists in the right place because when I type which wkhtmltopdf I am shown the path above. I also get told it's there when I try to brew install again. Furthermore when I type wkhtmltopdf google.com google.pdf it runs fine.

My controller looks like this:

def show #shows some material
@material = Material.find(params[:id])
  respond_to do |format|
    format.html
    format.pdf do
      render :pdf => '#{@material.id}',
             :wkhtmltopdf => '/usr/local/bin/wkhtmltopdf'
    end
  end

end

Any suggestions? Does this seem like a wkhtmltopdf issue or a wicked_pdf issue? I have bundle installed everything and bundle updated everything. I have added the wkhtmltopdf-binary gem (which shouldn't be necessary). It doesn't work on heroku either.

you can set a flag to render the stuff as html, does this work? — phoet
I'm not sure what you mean. The idea is to render the stuff as a pdf; it already works as html. Or am I missing the point (quite possible)? — Finnjon
usually, you include extra infos in a pdf (pagenumber etc) with custom headers. you can set show_as_html as an option to see the output before it's piped into wkhtmltopdf. this is great to make sure that the rendering is actually working as expected. — phoet

Bob Smith Bob Smith · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-12T05:20:59

Sounds like there may be a few wkhtmltopdf images out there. If rails is trying to use /usr/local/bin/wkhtmltopdf, try the command /usr/local/bin/wkhtmltopdf from a terminal and see is there are any problems running that one. If you have a few copies around from different gem installs, the one that runs first in your search path may not be the one rails is trying.

Hope it helps

Bob

Cannot get wkhtmltopdf to work in rails

2 Answers