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Dmitry Voronov for JetRockets

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at jetrockets.pro

Render and combine PDF files into one

Render PDF files from HTML templates in Rails can be done using WickedPDF.

First you need to use ActionView to render HTML to a string:

def render_to_string(data)
  action_view = ActionView::Base.new
  action_view.view_paths = ActionController::Base.view_paths

  action_view.class_eval do
    include ApplicationHelper
    include PDFHelper
    # or other helpers
  end

  action_view.render template: 'pdf/template.html',
                     layout: 'layout/pdf.html',
                     locals: { data: data }
end
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Then you can render pdf with the desired settings like this:

# first pdf file with some view settings and values from data1...
pdf1 = WickedPdf.new.pdf_from_string(
        render_to_string(data1), {
            pdf: 'report1',
            page_size: 'Letter',
            orientation: 'Portrait'
        })
# ...and second pdf file with some view settings and values from data2
pdf2 = WickedPdf.new.pdf_from_string(
        render_to_string(data2), {
            pdf: 'report2',
            page_size: 'Letter',
            orientation: 'Landscape'
        })
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And now you can combine it with CombinePDF gem, that provide you parse method to get PDF content and to_pdfmethod to render the result back to PDF.

combiner = CombinePDF.new
combiner << CombinePDF.parse(pdf1)
combiner << CombinePDF.parse(pdf2)
combiner.to_pdf
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