Ruby on Rails unable to generate pdf with map content wicked_pdf

Question

I'm trying to render a PDF of my page that contains a google map but it always comes out as empty. Strange thing is when I call the url using the wkhtmltopdf binary it actually work. Could I be missing something??? Here's my current setup

Home Controller

class HomeController < ApplicationController
  def index
    respond_to do |format|
        format.html
        format.pdf do
            render pdf: "Example PDF",
                layout: 'pdf.html.erb',
                show_as_html: params.key?('debug'),
                javascript_delay: 3000
        end
    end
  end
end

index.pdf.erb

<%- content_for :js do %>
  <script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.12.4.min.js"></script>
  <script src = "//maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?&key=GOOGLE_API_KEY"></script>
  <script src="//cdn.rawgit.com/mahnunchik/markerclustererplus/master/dist/markerclusterer.min.js"></script>
  <script>
      var map;
      function initMap() {
        map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById('map'), {
          center: {lat: -34.397, lng: 150.644},
          zoom: 8
        });
      }
      $(window).load(function(){
        initMap();
      })
  </script>
<% end %>

<h1>Google Map</h1>
<div id="map" style="width: 800px; height: 400px;"></div>

With debug set to true (to see the html that is used to render the pdf)

When I load the pdf url the map section is not rendered

When I used the wkhtmltopdf command line utitlity. It correctly renders the pdf.

$ wkhtmltopdf --javascript-delay 3000 http://localhost:4000/home/index.pdf?debug  output.pdf

Is there anything i'm doing wrong inside the rails app?? Some pointers would really help. Thank you!

Double-check that you don't have two different versions of wkhtmltopdf installed and are executing a different version on the terminal. This could be the case if you have: rubygems.org/gems/wkhtmltopdf-binary. Look at the command executed in the rails logs for more details, and try replicating that command exactly in the terminal. — Brendon Muir
@BrendonMuir the command executed in the rails log "***[\"/usr/local/bin/wkhtmltopdf\", \"-q\", \"--javascript-delay\", \"3000\", \"file:////var/folders/y4/18x7npks3w5b_yr8jz304wzr0000gn/T/wicked_pdf20180723-2048-1h1m8w7.html\", \"/var/folders/y4/18x7npks3w5b_yr8jz304wzr0000gn/T/wicked_pdf_generated_file20180723-2048-u71ska.pdf\"]*****" and doing which wkhtmltopdf returns /usr/local/bin/wkhtmltopdf which is the exact binary being used. Everything looks to be as it should — Joseph N.
Perhaps the javascript-delay is necessary in order to wait for the iframe with the map to load? Have you tried that on your command line test? — Brendon Muir

Ruslan Ruslan · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-24T16:58:20

Have you tried using WickedPdf.new.pdf_from_string?

It would look something like this:

Home Controller

class HomeController < ApplicationController
  def index
    respond_to do |format|
        format.html
        format.pdf do
            html = render_to_string(layout: 'pdf.html.erb')
            pdf = WickedPdf.new.pdf_from_string(html, {show_as_html: params.key?('debug'), javascript_delay: 3000})
            send_data pdf
        end
    end
  end
end

Not the best approach but you can inspect the string to see if it was generated properly before it gets pdf'd

Ruby on Rails unable to generate pdf with map content wicked_pdf

1 Answers