Printer-Friendly Pages

[VannSystems]

I would like to be able to have my show methods display in a Printer-friendly format if I click a link to do so. Is there a plugin or easy way to accomplish this? Thanks.

[ReggieB]

PDF is one way to go:

Rails PDF plug-in

or have a look at this article:

http://www.artima.com/rubycs/articles/pdf_writer.html

and here

http://ruby-pdf.rubyforge.org/pdf-writer/index.html

[VannSystems]

Thanks

[Luke Redpath]

Could you not just use a printer stylesheet?

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/goingtoprint/

[ReggieB]

Nice link Luke. I expects that a better way to go in this instance.

[Fenrir2]

A printer stylesheet is probably the way to go, but if you must show different html for printing you can add a content type and use something like this:

respond_to do |format|
  format.print { ... }
  format.html { ... }
end

Or is this a dirty hack?

[ReggieB]

According to the information on the page Luke linked to, you can specify the CSS via the HTML header info:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="print.css" />

Though of course catching it with respond_to at the server does offer possibility of serving the page in HTML unless the media request is for print, when a PDF will be rendered!

Interesting

[Luke Redpath]

If you want to serve up a PDF representation of a view, then there is no need to register a custom "print" mime/type; just use the PDF mimetype.

[VannSystems]

Thanks Luke!

[ReggieB]

If you want to serve up a PDF representation of a view, then there is no need to register a custom "print" mime/type; just use the PDF mimetype.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to suggest that people should do it, but rather that it was interesting that you could.

[madpilot]

A printer stylesheet is probably the way to go, but if you must show different html for printing you can add a content type and use something like this:

respond_to do |format|
  format.print { ... }
  format.html { ... }
end

Or is this a dirty hack?

There is a lot of debate over print stylesheet vs Separate layout vs PDF.

Using stylesheets is the PROPER way to do things (From a standards POV), as the File>Print feature works as expected. If you feel it necessary to use a "Print" link, use the document.print() javascript method.

If that isn't possible, a seperate layout is the next best option - for Rails 2.0 have a look at my blog post about aliasing formats.

Avoid PDF generation - it's too server intensive, requires a plug-in and is generally annoying to the end-user.

Hope that helps

[VannSystems]

Thanks Mad, I will check that out.