En example of using mako and pisa to generate pdf. Python 2.6 o 2.7 needed $ virtualenv --no-site-packages yourenv $ cd yourenv $ source bin/activate $pip install mako pypdf html5lib reportlab pisa $python mako_pisa_example.py

mako_pisa_example.py

import os, sys, subprocess
from mako.template import Template
from mako.runtime import Context
from cStringIO import StringIO #needed as buffer for mako
try:
	from mako.util import FastEncodingBuffer #new kind of buffer that is faster ( version 0.4) than StringIO
except:
	pass
from ho import pisa as pisa

def preview(pdf_file_name= "output.pdf"):
	if sys.platform == "win32":
		try:
			os.startfile( pdf_file_name)
		except:
			return 
		return 
	if sys.platform == "darwin":
		command = "open {0}".format(pdf_file_name)
	else:
		command = "xdg-open {0}".format( pdf_file_name )
		
	try:
		p = subprocess.Popen(command, shell = True)
		pid , sts = os.waitpid(p.pid, 0)
	except subprocess.CalledProcessError, e:
		print "Error", e.returncode
		print e.output
	return 


def generate( data = "hello world", template_file = "foo.html", output_file_name = "template_output.html", pdf_file_name="output.pdf"):
	
	t = Template(filename = template_file, input_encoding = "utf-8")
	try:
		buf = FastEncodingBuffer()
	except:
		buf = StringIO()
	ctx = Context(buf, data = data)
	t.render_context( ctx )
	open(output_file_name,"w").write(buf.getvalue())

	html = buf.getvalue().encode("utf-8")
			
	pdf = pisa.CreatePDF(StringIO(html), file( pdf_file_name, "wb"))
	if pdf.err:
		print "I couldn't generate {0}".format( pdf_file_name ) 
		return
	try:
		pdf.dest.close()
	except:
		print "Problems when closing pdf file"
		return

if __name__ == "__main__":
	generate()
	preview()