Saucerly provides PDF rendering for your Rails app using the Java-based FlyingSaucer library.

It is based on Princely. The benefit of Saucerly is that it provides competent XHTML to PDF rendering without the $4k PrinceXML pricetag.

Rendering from a template:

class ExamplesController < ApplicationController::Base
  def show
    @document = Document.find(params[:id])
  
    respond_to do |format|
      format.html
      format.pdf { render :pdf => 'file_name', :template => 'controller/action.pdf.haml', :layout => 'pdf' }
    end
  end
end

Rendering from an inline string:

render :pdf => 'file_name', :inline => 'XHTML goes here'

First, set up the dependencies:

1. Install JRuby
2. Register the flying_saucer gem dependency: add config.gem 'flying_saucer' to config/environment.rb
3. Install flying_saucer: jruby -S rake gems:install

Then, install Saucerly:

• As a gem, add config.gem 'timriley-saucerly', :source => 'http://gems.github.com/', :lib => 'saucerly' to config/environment.rb and run jruby -S rake gems:install
• As a plugin, run jruby script/plugin install git://github.com/timriley/saucerly

Now you're ready to go! Add some code to your controllers like the examples above.

If you're developing on OS X and you don't want a Java icon to appear in your dock, put java.lang.System.set_property("java.awt.headless", "true") in environment.rb or an initializer

Copyright (c) 2009 Tim Riley & RentMonkey Pty Ltd, released under the MIT license