Question

I’m trying to understand the Prawn pdf gem.

I was able to make it generate a pdf. Every gem in the gemfile included:

gem 'mysql', '~> 2.8.1'
gem 'prawn', '~> 0.12.0'
gem 'pdf-reader', '~> 0.10.0'
gem 'Ascii85', '~> 1.0.1'

In the config/application.rb:

config.autoload_paths << "#{Rails.root}/app/reports"

Then in the controller:

 require 'prawn'

 def index
  pdf = Prawn::Document.new
  pdf.text "Hello World"
  pdf.render_file "x.pdf"
 end

Than I call the index function. A PDF named x.pdf is created in the root of my application. Amongst the gemfile, rakefile and config.ru.

Question:

1. How can I force prawn to generate the file in the app/report (or any other selected) folder?
2. How can I make the action to generate the file in the browser window and don’t save it?
3. How can I make it to save and show up in the browser window?

Answer 1

How can I force prawn to generate the file in the app/report (or any other selected) folder?

def index
  pdf = Prawn::Document.new
  pdf.text "Hello World"
  pdf.render_file File.join(Rails.root, "app/report", "x.pdf")
end

How can I make the action to generate the file in the browser window and don’t save it?

def index
  pdf = Prawn::Document.new
  pdf.text "Hello World"
  send_data pdf.render, :filename => "x.pdf", :type => "application/pdf"
end

How can I make it to save and show up in the browser window?

def index
  pdf = Prawn::Document.new
  pdf.text "Hello World"
  filename = File.join(Rails.root, "app/report", "x.pdf")
  pdf.render_file filename
  send_file filename, :filename => "x.pdf", :type => "application/pdf"
end