How to convert HTML to PDF in grails using wkhtmltopdf plugin

Posted By : Tushar Paliwal | 20-Jun-2015

grails

Hello there, in this tutorial I'm gonna share my knowledge about how can we convert HTML content into PDF content. Recently i faced a situation where i need to convert my project HTML content into CSV content.

I investigated over internet and found many solutions, in those solutions i got huge lines of code which was really hectic to understand finally i found i killer solution which is done using grails plugin. So now we will play with grails plugin which is wkhtmltopdf.

Introduction

This plugin provides an easy inetgration of wkhtmltopdf library with grails, which is used to convert html content into pdf format. It can obviously convert GSP into PDF.

Integration of wkhtmltopdf plugin with grails

Step 1 :

Put an entry in BuildConfig.groovy file.

dependencies {
        compile ":wkhtmltopdf:0.1.8"
    }

Step 2 :

For using this plugin we need to install wkhtmltopdf binary into system for this, you just need to run below commands.

1. sudo apt-get remove --purge wkhtmltopdf
2. sudo apt-get install openssl build-essential xorg libssl-dev
3. wget http://wkhtmltopdf.googlecode.com/files/wkhtmltopdf-0.9.9-static-i386.tar.bz2
4. tar xvjf wkhtmltopdf-0.9.9-static-i386.tar.bz2
5. sudo chown root:root wkhtmltopdf-i386
6. sudo cp wkhtmltopdf-i386 /usr/bin/wkhtmltopdf

Now put an entry in Config.groovy file.

Step 3 :

grails.plugin.wkhtmltox.binary = "/usr/bin/wkhtmltopdf"

Which is location of binary installed into system for wkhtmltopdf.

Step 4 :

The plugin provides a service WkhtmltoxService which contains a method makePdf() so we just need to create instance of this service and use this method for conversion.

def byte[] pdfData = wkhtmltoxService.makePdf(
				view: templatePath,
				marginLeft: 20,
				marginTop: 35,
				marginBottom: 20,
				marginRight: 20,
				headerSpacing: 10,
		)

templatePath :This is location of html content which needs to be converted into PDF.

In above method makePdf() returns raw bytes of pdf content which can be used further processing or can be used by writing into the file.

I hope this will be meaningful for you, feel free to ask any query.

THANKS