iMDtoPDF

iMDtoPDF.py

#! /usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
 
## iMDtoPDF.py
## by W. Caleb McDaniel
## http://wcm1.web.rice.edu
 
## This is a wrapper script for sending documents to Docverter
## for conversion from markdown to PDF using Pandoc. Typically
## Docverter calls are made with cURL; this script uses httplib.
## It is intended for use with Pythonista on iOS, so output file
## is uploaded to Dropbox after document conversion.
## For more information, see: http://www.docverter.com/api.html

import clipboard
import datetime
import httplib
import mimetypes

## https://gist.github.com/omz/4034526
## http://omz-software.com/pythonista/forums/discussion/10/using-the-dropbox-module/p1
from dropboxlogin import get_client
dropbox_client = get_client()

## Helper functions for posting multipart/form-data request
## using standard libraries. Updated to reflect changes to
## httplib in Python 2.0.
## {{{ http://code.activestate.com/recipes/146306/ (r1)
 
def post_multipart(host, selector, fields, files):
    """
    Post fields and files to an http host as multipart/form-data.
    fields is a sequence of (name, value) elements for regular form fields.
    files is a sequence of (name, filename, value) elements for data to be uploaded as files
    Return the server's response page.
    """
    content_type, body = encode_multipart_formdata(fields, files)
    h = httplib.HTTPConnection(host)
    h.putrequest('POST', selector)
    h.putheader('content-type', content_type)
    h.putheader('content-length', str(len(body)))
    h.endheaders()
    h.send(body)
    response = h.getresponse()
    output = response.read()
    return output
    # return h.file.read()
 
def encode_multipart_formdata(fields, files):
    """
    fields is a sequence of (name, value) elements for regular form fields.
    files is a sequence of (name, filename, value) elements for data to be uploaded as files
    Return (content_type, body) ready for httplib.HTTP instance
    """
    BOUNDARY = '----------ThIs_Is_tHe_bouNdaRY_$'
    CRLF = '\r\n'
    L = []
    for (key, value) in fields:
        L.append('--' + BOUNDARY)
        L.append('Content-Disposition: form-data; name="%s"' % key)
        L.append('')
        L.append(value)
    for (key, filename, value) in files:
        L.append('--' + BOUNDARY)
        L.append('Content-Disposition: form-data; name="%s"; filename="%s"' % (key, filename))
        L.append('Content-Type: %s' % get_content_type(filename))
        L.append('')
        L.append(value)
    L.append('--' + BOUNDARY + '--')
    L.append('')
    body = CRLF.join(L)
    content_type = 'multipart/form-data; boundary=%s' % BOUNDARY
    return content_type, body
 
def get_content_type(filename):
    return mimetypes.guess_type(filename)[0] or 'application/octet-stream'
 
## end of http://code.activestate.com/recipes/146306/ }}}
 
## Now let's DO this. First put some markdown text on your clipboard.
 
## Put clipboard contents in a file to send to Docverter.
input_text = clipboard.get()
f = open("docverterin.txt", "w").write(input_text)

## Use CSS to style your output. I've included some sensible defaults.
css = """
body {margin: 4em; }
p {line-height: 1.2em; text-align: justify;}
h1, h2, h3, h4 {font-weight: normal;}
sup {line-height: 0;}
hr {border: 1px #eee solid; margin-top: 2em; margin-botom: 2em; width: 70%;}
pre {white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;}
"""
# Use CSS3 Paged Media Module to number pages of PDF, set margins.
page_info = "@page {margin: 1in; @bottom-center{content: counter(page)}}"
c = open("docverter.css", "w").write(css + page_info)

## Set Docverter options and define fields using lists.
## Other options available at http://www.docverter.com/api.html#toc_2
fields = [("from", "markdown"), ("to", "pdf"), ("css", "docverter.css")]
files = [("input_files[]", "docverterin.txt", open("docverterin.txt", "r").read()), ("other_files[]", "docverter.css", open("docverter.css","r").read())]
 
## Post to Docverter using post_multipart()
output = post_multipart("c.docverter.com", "/convert", fields, files)
 
## Write output to a PDF file, appending timestamp to filename. 
today = datetime.datetime.now()
outfile = 'output-' + today.strftime('%Y%m%d-%H%M%S') + '.pdf'
o = open(outfile, "w").write(output)

## Upload file to Dropbox, appending timestamp to filename
o = open(outfile)
upload = dropbox_client.put_file(outfile, o)

This script is truly great! The only problem is that you can't have any non ASCII characters in your markdown (for example the Swedish letters å, ä and ö). Any idea of how to fix this?

Thanks in advance!

Found it myself. "input_text.encode('ascii', 'xmlcharrefreplace')" seems to do it.

input_text = clipboard.get()
input_text = input_text.encode('ascii', 'xmlcharrefreplace')
f = open("docverterin.txt", "w").write(input_text)

With the new version of Pythonista the "Open in..." function is a better solution to the above mentioned problem, since you don't have to write the text file again and mess up the Unicode. It also makes the workflow more smooth.