Rails, Prawn - PDF show up in browser & etc

Question

I'm trying to understand the Prawn pdf gem.

I was able to make it generate a pdf. Every gem in the gemfile included:

gem 'mysql', '~> 2.8.1'
gem 'prawn', '~> 0.12.0'
gem 'pdf-reader', '~> 0.10.0'
gem 'Ascii85', '~> 1.0.1'

In the config/application.rb:

config.autoload_paths << "#{Rails.root}/app/reports"

Then in the controller:

 require 'prawn'

 def index
  pdf = Prawn::Document.new
  pdf.text "Hello World"
  pdf.render_file "x.pdf"
 end

Than I call the index function. A PDF named x.pdf is created in the root of my application. Amongst the gemfile, rakefile and config.ru.

Question:

1. How can I force prawn to generate the file in the app/report (or any other selected) folder?
2. How can I make the action to generate the file in the browser window and don't save it?
3. How can I make it to save and show up in the browser window?

Answer 1

How can I force prawn to generate the file in the app/report (or any other selected) folder?

def index
  pdf = Prawn::Document.new
  pdf.text "Hello World"
  pdf.render_file File.join(Rails.root, "app/report", "x.pdf")
end

How can I make the action to generate the file in the browser window and don't save it?

def index
  pdf = Prawn::Document.new
  pdf.text "Hello World"
  send_data pdf.render, :filename => "x.pdf", :type => "application/pdf"
end

How can I make it to save and show up in the browser window?

def index
  pdf = Prawn::Document.new
  pdf.text "Hello World"
  filename = File.join(Rails.root, "app/report", "x.pdf")
  pdf.render_file filename
  send_file filename, :filename => "x.pdf", :type => "application/pdf"
end

Answer 2

Answering Question 3: "How can I make it to save and show up in the browser window?"

def index
  pdf = Prawn::Document.new
  pdf.text 'Hello World'
  send_data pdf.render, filename: 'x.pdf', type: 'application/pdf', disposition: 'inline'
end

disposition: 'inline' will force the browser ( if it can ) to display your PDF inside the current browser window

Answer 3

Try this:

 def index
  pdf = Prawn::Document.new
  pdf.text "Hello World"
  send_data pdf.render, :filename => "x.pdf", :type => "application/pdf"
 end

That said, for anything but a trivial PDF you will probably want to generate it outside the controller somewhere.