Rails-LaTeX
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Original author: Geoff Jacobsen
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Copyright: 2010-2015 Geoff Jacobsen, Jan Baier and contributors
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License: MIT-LICENSE
Description
rails-latex is a renderer for rails 3 which allows tex files with erb to be turned into an inline pdf.
Synopsis
app/helpers/application_helper.rb:
def lesc(text)
LatexToPdf.escape_latex(text)
end
app/views/stories/show.html.erb:
...
<%= link_to "print", story_path(@story,:format => :pdf) %>
app/views/stories/show.pdf.erb:
...
<%= lesc @story.name % >
app/views/layouts/application.pdf.erbtex:
\documentclass[12pt,a4paper,sloppy,< %= @landscape % >]{article}
...
< %= yield % >
\end{document}
config/initializers/mime_types.rb:
...
Mime::Type.register "application/pdf", :pdf, ['text/pdf'], ['pdf']
Only the file containing the \documentclass should be of type: .pdf.erbtex . Partials and views (when there is a layout) should be of type .pdf.erb .
If a LaTeX package requires more than one parser run add the following to the .pdf.erbtex file:
<% @latex_config={:parse_runs => 3} %>
You can override the defaults like so:
LatexToPdf.config.merge! :command => 'xetex', :arguments => ['-etex'], :parse_runs => 2
or to change just the arguments:
LatexToPdf.config[:arguments].delete('-halt-on-error')
The defaults are:
command: 'pdflatex'
arguments: ['-halt-on-error']
parse_runs: 1
The last log file is moved to tmp/rails-latex/input.log , and the corresponding source TeX file to tmp/rails-latex/input.tex . If the PDF is not produced the build directory is not removed; an archive script should be written to occasionally clean up the tmp/rails-latex directory.
See the rails application under examples/rails-latex-demo/ for a working example.
Generating a String
If you need to generate the LaTeX document as a string you can use the render_to_string method. You will probably need to pass the :layout => true option to invoke the PDF generator. Here is an example to generate an email attachment:
In the controller you will have something along the lines of:
def send_email_method
output = render_to_string(:template => "/your_model/your_view.pdf.erb", :layout => true)
MyMailer.email_sender(current_user, output).deliver
end
The thing to note is the :layout => true which is needed so that the pdf template can grab the application erbtex layout. Then in your mailer:
def email_sender(user, pdf_attachment)
@user = user
attachments["attachment_name.pdf"] = {:mime_type => 'application/pdf', :content => pdf_attachment}
mail( .... )
end
Requirements
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ruby 1.8 or 1.9
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rails 3
Install
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gem install rails-latex
Development
Developing rails-latex requires bundler and RedCloth
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rake test
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rake build
Contributions
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Geoff Jacobsen
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Tommaso Patrizi
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Klaus Reske