Prince.rb update

Michael Day from YesLogic emailed me the other day to alert me to a possible problem with my original HTML/CSS to PDF in Rails code.

We’ve recently received a bug report on our forum of Ruby leaving zombie Prince processes running on UNIX systems:

http://princexml.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1149

It looks as if this issue affects Seth’s module and probably the Princely plugin which appears to be based upon it.

I believe the solution for this is to add a call to pdf.close_read as mentioned at the end of that thread.

Cheers,

Michael

— Print XML with Prince! http://www.princexml.com

Below I’ve pasted the newest code, and here’s a link to the fixed prince.rb library.

Enjoy.

Prince.rb

# Prince XML Ruby interface. 
# http://www.princexml.com
#
# Library by Subimage Interactive - http://www.subimage.com
#
#
# USAGE
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
#   prince = Prince.new()
#   html_string = render_to_string(:template => 'some_document')
#   send_data(
#     prince.pdf_from_string(html_string),
#     :filename => 'some_document.pdf'
#     :type => 'application/pdf'
#   )
#

class Prince

  attr_accessor :exe_path, :style_sheets, :log_file

  # Initialize method
  #
  def initialize()
    # Finds where the application lives, so we can call it.
    @exe_path = `which prince`.chomp
      @style_sheets = ''
      @log_file = "#{RAILS_ROOT}/log/prince.log"
  end

  # Sets stylesheets...
  # Can pass in multiple paths for css files.
  #
  def add_style_sheets(*sheets)
    for sheet in sheets do
      @style_sheets << " -s #{sheet} "
    end
  end

  # Returns fully formed executable path with any command line switches
  # we've set based on our variables.
  #
  def exe_path
    # Add any standard cmd line arguments we need to pass
    @exe_path << " --input=html --server --log=#{@log_file} "
    @exe_path << @style_sheets
    return @exe_path
  end

  # Makes a pdf from a passed in string.
  #
  # Returns PDF as a stream, so we can use send_data to shoot
  # it down the pipe using Rails.
  #
  def pdf_from_string(string)
    path = self.exe_path()
    # Don't spew errors to the standard out...and set up to take IO 
    # as input and output
    path << ' --silent - -o -'

    # Show the command used...
    #logger.info "\n\nPRINCE XML PDF COMMAND"
    #logger.info path
    #logger.info ''

    # Actually call the prince command, and pass the entire data stream back.
    pdf = IO.popen(path, "w+")
    pdf.puts(string)
    pdf.close_write
    output = pdf.gets(nil)
    pdf.close_read
    return output
  end
end
seth, Tue, 05 Feb 2008 08:56:00 GMT
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