rendering a ReportLab pdf built from SimpleDocTemplate

Question

I\'ve a got a django app that currently generates pdfs using a canvas that the user can download. I create a StringIO buffer, do some stuff and then send call response.write.

Answer 1

For people who are working with python3 and django 1.7+ some changes to the answer need to be done.

from django.shortcuts import HttpResponse
import io
from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, BaseDocTemplate

def view(request):
    buffer = io.BytesIO()

    doc = # ... create your SimpleDocTemplate / BaseDocTemplate
    # create the usual story
    story = []
    # ...
    doc.build(story)

    response = HttpResponse(content_type='application/pdf')
    response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=your_name.pdf'
    response.write(buffer.getvalue())
    buffer.close()

    return response