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Creating PDFs

Anvil Forms can be converted to PDFs with a single function call. You might do this in order to attach a PDF to an email, print a PDF, or allow your users to download a PDF.

Converting a Form to a PDF

You can convert Forms to PDFs by calling anvil.pdf.render_form() in server code. Pass in the name of the Form you wish to print as a string. If the Form takes any arguments to its __init__ method, you can pass these in as extra arguments to render_form() (this is exactly like calling open_form()):

# In server code

import anvil.pdf

@anvil.server.callable
def create_zaphod_pdf():
  media_object = anvil.pdf.render_form('Form1', 42, name='Zaphod')
  return media_object

The return value of render_form() is a Media object. This means you can download it in client code:

   # In client code
   import anvil.media

   def download_zaphod_pdf(self):
     media_object = anvil.server.call('create_zaphod_pdf')
     anvil.media.download(media_object)

You can attach it to an email:

@anvil.server.callable
def send_pdf_email():
  anvil.email.send(
    from_name="The Zaphod Generator", 
    to="shaun@anvil.works", 
    subject="An auto-generated Zaphod",
    text="Your auto-generated Zaphod is attached to this email as a PDF.",
    attachments=anvil.pdf.render_form('Form1', 42, name='Zaphod')
  )

You can also store it in a Data Table:

app_tables.my_pdfs.add_row(
  added=datetime.now(),
  owner=anvil.users.get_user(),
  pdf=anvil.pdf.render_form('Form1', 42, name='Zaphod'),
)

You could store it in Google Drive too. Anything you can do with a Media Object, you can do with your PDF file!

PDF rendering only works in deployment environments that have a URL. If you see the error Cannot render a PDF in an environment with no URL, you’ll need to choose a new URL for your environment or click “Get a link to my development environment” from the Publish modal.

Customising settings

You can adjust the image quality, page settings, margins or generated filename for your PDF by instantiating a PDFRenderer(), and calling its render_form() method:

  from anvil.pdf import PDFRenderer

  pdf = PDFRenderer(page_size='A4').render_form('Form1')

You may specify the following arguments to the PDFRenderer() constructor:

  • filename (string): The name of the generated PDF file. (Default: "print.pdf").

  • landscape (True or False): Generate a PDF in landscape orientation. (Default: False).

  • page_size (string or tuple): Can be the name of a standard page size ("letter" or "A0"-"A10"), or a tuple of (width, height) in centimetres. (Default: "letter").

  • margins (dict or number): Page margins (in centimetres), as a dictionary specifying margins on each side (eg {'top': 1.0, 'bottom': 1.0, 'left': 1.0, 'right': 1.0}) or as a number specifying a global margin. (Default 1.0).

  • scale (number): The scale (zoom level) at which you are printing. (Default 1.0).

  • quality (string): The quality of the generated PDF, which has a large impact on file size (Default "default"). Available values are:

    • "original": All images will be embedded at original resolution. Output file can be very large.
    • "screen": Low-resolution output similar to the Acrobat Distiller “Screen Optimized” setting.
    • "printer": Output similar to the Acrobat Distiller “Print Optimized” setting.
    • "prepress": Output similar to Acrobat Distiller “Prepress Optimized” setting.
    • "default": Output intended to be useful across a wide variety of uses, possibly at the expense of a larger output file.

Do you still have questions?

Our Community Forum is full of helpful information and Anvil experts.

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