Any way to create PDF file with wkhtmltopdf without returning HttpResponse or using URL? I just want to attach PDF file to email

Question

I'm using wkhtmltopdf wrapper to generate template into PDF in Django 1.6. It works fine when I want to display the PDF afterwards or send the PDF file with HttpResponse for download but what I want to do is to create the file in my tmp folder and attach it to an email.

I'm not sure how to achieve this.

# views.py

context = {
    'products_dict': products_dict,
    'main_categories': main_categories,
    'user_category': user_category
}

response = PDFTemplateResponse(request=request,
                               context=context,
                               template="my_template.html",
                               filename="filename.pdf",
                               show_content_in_browser=True,
                               cmd_options={'encoding': 'utf8',
                                            'quiet': True,
                                            'orientation': 'landscape',
                                           }
                               )

return response

The code above generate the PDF exactly how I want it. The thing is I don't want to display the PDF in the browser or start a download (I don't want to return response). I just want to create it and then attach the file to an email like this:

email = EmailMessage()
email.subject = "subject"
email.body = "Your PDF"
email.from_email = "[email protected]"
email.to = [ "[email protected]", ]

# Attach PDF file to the email
email.attach_file(my_pdf_file_here)
# Send email
email.send()

I tried to use subprocess but it doesn't seem like I can send context to my template to render it before generating the PDF.

EDIT (SOLUTION): Thanks to Daniel Roseman for the help to go towards what I wanted. I did use the tests file of wkhtmltopdf here: http://pydoc.net/Python/django-wkhtmltopdf/1.1/wkhtmltopdf.tests.tests/

This is what I did in my view:

order = Order.objects.get(id=order_id)
return_file = "tmp/" + 'order' + str(order_id) + '.pdf'

context = {
    'order' : order,
    'items' : order.ordered_products.all()
}

response = PDFTemplateResponse(request=request, 
                               context=context, 
                               template="'products/order_pdf.html'",
                               cmd_options={ 'encoding': 'utf8',
                                             'quiet': True
                                           }
                               )

temp_file = response.render_to_temporary_file("products/order_pdf.html")

wkhtmltopdf(pages=[temp_file.name], output=return_file)

You can then use the return_file in email.attach() method like this:

email.attach_file(return_file)

You can also omit output parameter in the wkhtmltopdf method. Then the method will return the output and use this output in attach_file() method.

You can do this by encode pdf file with base64 and appending to message body. — Sencer H.
Attaching the file to the email is not a problem. The problem is to create the PDF file with wkhtmltopdf without returning an HttpResponse or using a URL/Class-based view — dguay
Oh! Im sorry. Can't you just write output of the wkhtmtopdf to into a file in binary mode? — Sencer H.
I don't know how to produce the PDF output in my view without returning HttpResponse — dguay
In your example, return is not looks like HttpResponse. Unless if wkhtmltopdf output is. If output of wk is HttpResponse object I guess you need to do some workaround. — Sencer H.

Daniel Roseman Daniel Roseman · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-18T16:00:47

Your issue is not with wkhtmltopdf, but the django-wkhtmltopdf which provides some class-based views that it renders with wkhtmltopdf. If you don't want a view, you don't need to use them: you could just render the template yourself and pass the result string to the command-line wkhtmltopdf tool.

It looks like the django-wkhtmltopdf library does provide some utility functions (in the utils directory) which might make that last stage a bit easier.

Any way to create PDF file with wkhtmltopdf without returning HttpResponse or using URL? I just want to attach PDF file to email

3 Answers