Using weasyprint instead of wkhtmltopdf?

[hadmut]

Hi,

I just wanted to teach a ruby gem, which is usually run inside a docker container based on Alpine Linux to generate PDFs using wicked_pdf

Problem: wkhtmltopdf is not available under Alpine as a package. And wkhtmltopdf.org (https://wkhtmltopdf.org/downloads.html) doesn't offer a precompiled binary for Alpine, therefore the gem wkhtmltopdf-binary doesn't bring a usable binary.

Instead, Alpine comes with weasyprint, which more or less does the same job as wkhtmltopdf. Some say, it generates better results and has a better implemenation and HTML compatibility, while others say, that it lacks some of the math functions in CSS. But in general, they are competitors.

Of course, one could (probably, not sure whether it works with the musl c library) compile wkhtmltopdf on Alpine, but that would require lots of software installation such as compilers and libraries.

Since weasyprint in general does pretty much the same job as wkhtmltopdf, how much work would it be to get wicked_pdf running with weasyprint as well?

regards

[unixmonkey]

I'm not currently interested in having wicked_pdf handle multiple backend PDF generation engines (1 is more than enough trouble). You could however, fork this library or use it as inspiration for a weasyprint wrapper.

Or you could use the existing weasyprint gem.

If you'd really like to get wkhtmltopdf running on Alpine, there are some notes in this thread:
zakird/wkhtmltopdf_binary_gem#53

And there's a binary provider gem to install wkhtmltopdf on Alpine here:
https://github.com/khalilgharbaoui/wkhtmltopdf-binary-edge-alpine

Please let me know how it goes for you, and what you path you chose to go with!

[hadmut]

I still need some testing and comparing wkhtmltopdf with weasyprint, both seem to have their advantages and disadvantages. It will take some time to get to a final answer.