README_prawn.mdown

Prawn-handler

A Rails template handler for PDF library Prawn. You can find a more detailed description in its introduction article.

There already exists prawnto but it's too bloated for my taste. Prawn-handler is lightweight, simple, and less of a hassle to use.

Usage

3. Name PDF view files like foo.pdf.prawn. Inside, use the pdf method to access a Prawn::Document object. In addition, this handler allows for lazy method calls: you don't have to specify the receiver explicitely, which cleans up the resulting view code.

   For example, the following code with formal calls:

   pdf.bounding_box [100, 600], :width => 200 do
     pdf.text "The rain in spain falls mainly on the plains " * 5
     pdf.stroke do
       pdf.line pdf.bounds.top_left,    pdf.bounds.top_right
       pdf.line pdf.bounds.bottom_left, pdf.bounds.bottom_right
     end
   end
   

   Is equivalent to this one with lazy calls:

   bounding_box [100, 600], :width => 200 do
     text "The rain in spain falls mainly on the plains " * 5
     stroke do
       line bounds.top_left,    bounds.top_right
       line bounds.bottom_left, bounds.bottom_right
     end
   end
   

   This is accomplished without instance_eval, so that access to instance variables set by the controller is retained.

Credits

Initially written by Roman Le Négrate (contact). Released under the MIT-license: see the LICENSE file. Adopted to Rails 3 by Torsten Rüger