RESTful PDF on Rails 2.0

In this post, I'll guide you on how to serve PDF the RESTful way. Since Rails 2.0 preview is just released, I choose to use it over version 1.2.3. You can refer http://weblog.rubyonrails.com/2007/9/30/rails-2-0-0-preview-release on how to install Rails 2.0 preview.

deman@ubuntu:~/rails$ rails restful
create
create app/controllers
create app/helpers
......
create doc/README_FOR_APP
create log/server.log
create log/production.log
create log/development.log
create log/test.log

To generate pdf, you need to install railspdf plugin.

gem install pdf-writer

ruby script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org//var/svn/railspdfplugin/railspdf/

We need to edit config/initializers/mime_types.rb to register pdf mime type:

# Be sure to restart your server when you modify this file.

# Add new mime types for use in respond_to blocks:
# Mime::Type.register "text/richtext", :rtf
# Mime::Type.register_alias "text/html", :iphone

Mime::Type.register "application/pdf", :pdf

Create a controller, in my case example controller.

script/generate controller example show
deman@ubuntu:~/rails/restful$ script/generate controller example show
exists app/controllers/
exists app/helpers/
create app/views/example
exists test/functional/
create app/controllers/example_controller.rb
create test/functional/example_controller_test.rb
create app/helpers/example_helper.rb
create app/views/example/show.html.erb

Then add the line below into config/routes.rb:

map.resources :example

Make sure you add the above sentence before this sentence:

# Install the default routes as the lowest priority.

Then we create the model for example.


deman@ubuntu:~/rails/restful$ script/generate model example word:string
exists app/models/
exists test/unit/
exists test/fixtures/
create app/models/example.rb
create test/unit/example_test.rb
create test/fixtures/examples.yml
create db/migrate
create db/migrate/001_create_examples.rb


deman@ubuntu:~/rails/restful$ rake db:migrate
(in /home/deman/rails/restful)
== 1 CreateExamples: migrating ================================================
-- create_table(:examples)
-> 0.4842s
== 1 CreateExamples: migrated (0.4844s) =======================================

We then run ruby console to add one record

deman@ubuntu:~/rails/restful$ script/console
Loading development environment (Rails 1.2.3)
>> e = Example.create(:word => "Hello World")
=> #

Edit app/controllers/example_controller.rb

class ExampleController < ApplicationController

  def show
        @example = Example.find(params[:id])
        respond_to do |format|
                format.html # show.html.erb
                format.pdf { render :action => 'show' }
        end

  def getpdf
        @paper='A4'
  end 
  end
end

Edit app/views/example/show.html.erb

<%= @example.word %>

Edit app/views/example/show.rpdf

pdf.select_font "Times-Roman"
pdf.text @example.word

Ok, now we set to test our application.

To view the normal html page, http://localhost:3000/example/1
To view the pdf file instead, http://localhost:3000/example/1.pdf

Tq.