Appendix L: ReportLab Demos

In the subdirectories of reportlab/demos there are a number of working examples showing almost all aspects of reportlab in use.

12.13 Odyssey

The three scripts odyssey.py, dodyssey.py and fodyssey.py all take the file odyssey.txt and produce PDF documents. The included odyssey.txt is short; a longer and more testing version can be found at ftp://ftp.reportlab.com/odyssey.full.zip.

Windows
cd reportlab\demos\odyssey
python odyssey.py
start odyssey.pdf

Linux
cd reportlab/demos/odyssey
python odyssey.py
acrord odyssey.pdf

Simple formatting is shown by the odyssey.py script. It runs quite fast, but all it does is gather the text and force it onto the canvas pages. It does no paragraph manipulation at all so you get to see the XML < & > tags.

The scripts fodyssey.py and dodyssey.py handle paragraph formatting so you get to see colour changes etc. Both scripts use the document template class and the dodyssey.py script shows the ability to do dual column layout and uses multiple page templates.

12.14 Standard Fonts and Colors

In reportlab/demos/stdfonts the script stdfonts.py can be used to illustrate ReportLab's standard fonts. Run the script using

cd reportlab\demos\stdfonts
python stdfonts.py

to produce two PDF documents, StandardFonts_MacRoman.pdf & StandardFonts_WinAnsi.pdf which show the two most common built in font encodings.

The colortest.py script in reportlab/demos/colors demonstrates the different ways in which reportlab can set up and use colors.

Try running the script and viewing the output document, colortest.pdf. This shows different color spaces and a large selection of the colors which are named in the reportlab.lib.colors module.

12.15 Py2pdf

Dinu Gherman contributed this useful script which uses reportlab to produce nicely colorized PDF documents from Python scripts including bookmarks for classes, methods and functions. To get a nice version of the main script try

cd reportlab/demos/py2pdf
python py2pdf.py py2pdf.py
acrord py2pdf.pdf

i.e. we used py2pdf to produce a nice version of py2pdf.py in the document with the same rootname and a .pdf extension.

The py2pdf.py script has many options which are beyond the scope of this simple introduction; consult the comments at the start of the script.

12.16 Gadflypaper

The Python script, gfe.py, in reportlab/demos/gadflypaper uses an inline style of document preparation. The script almost entirely produced by Aaron Watters produces a document describing Aaron's gadfly in memory database for Python. To generate the document use

cd reportlab\gadflypaper
python gfe.py
start gfe.pdf

everything in the PDF document was produced by the script which is why this is an inline style of document production. So, to produce a header followed by some text the script uses functions header and p which take some text and append to a global story list.

header("Conclusion")

p("""The revamped query engine design in Gadfly 2 supports
..........
and integration.""")

12.17 Pythonpoint

Andy Robinson has refined the pythonpoint.py script (in reportlab\demos\pythonpoint) until it is a really useful script. It takes an input file containing an XML markup and uses an xmllib style parser to map the tags into PDF slides. When run in its own directory pythonpoint.py takes as a default input the file pythonpoint.xml and produces pythonpoint.pdf which is documentation for Pythonpoint! You can also see it in action with an older paper

cd reportlab\demos\pythonpoint
python pythonpoint.py monterey.xml
start monterey.pdf

Not only is pythonpoint self documenting, but it also demonstrates reportlab and PDF. It uses many features of reportlab (document templates, tables etc). Exotic features of PDF such as fadeins and bookmarks are also shown to good effect. The use of an XML document can be contrasted with the inline style of the gadflypaper demo; the content is completely separate from the formatting