Converting HTML page to PDF in Django

In this article, we will learn how to convert an HTML page to a PDF file and provide a download link for the PDF in a Django application.

First, we need to install the necessary dependencies. We can use the django-wkhtmltopdf package to achieve this. Install it using the command:

pip install django-wkhtmltopdf

Next, we need to add 'wkhtmltopdf' to the INSTALLED_APPS in the settings.py file.

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'wkhtmltopdf',
    ...
]

Now, we can create a view that returns the HTML page as a PDF file. We can use the pdftemplate_view decorator to achieve this. For example:

from wkhtmltopdf.views import PDFTemplateView

class PDFDownloadView(PDFTemplateView):
    template_name = 'my_template.html'

    def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
        context = super().get_context_data(**kwargs)
        # Add context data if needed
        return context

pdf_download_view = PDFDownloadView.as_view()

Finally, we can add a URL pattern for the PDF download view and create a link in a template to download the PDF file. For example:

# urls.py
from django.urls import path
from .views import pdf_download_view

urlpatterns = [
    ...
    path('download-pdf/', pdf_download_view, name='download_pdf'),
    ...
]

# my_template.html
Download PDF

Now, when a user visits the /download-pdf/ URL, they will be able to download the HTML page as a PDF file.

With these steps, we have successfully converted an HTML page to a PDF file and provided a download link for the PDF in a Django application.