pythonhtmlcsspdfxhtml2pdf

CSS parsing error when creating pdf with xhtml2pdf pisa.CreatePDF()

I am following the xhtml2pdf guides.

I have used one of the sample html files and saved as test.html:

<html>
<head>
<style>
    @page {
        size: a4 portrait;
        @frame header_frame {           # Static Frame
            -pdf-frame-content: header_content;
            left: 50pt; width: 512pt; top: 50pt; height: 40pt;
        }
        @frame content_frame {          # Content Frame
            left: 50pt; width: 512pt; top: 90pt; height: 632pt;
        }
        @frame footer_frame {           # Another static Frame
            -pdf-frame-content: footer_content;
            left: 50pt; width: 512pt; top: 772pt; height: 20pt;
        }
    }
</style>
</head>

<body>
    <!-- Content for Static Frame 'header_frame' -->
    <div id="header_content">Lyrics-R-Us</div>

    <!-- Content for Static Frame 'footer_frame' -->
    <div id="footer_content">(c) - page <pdf:pagenumber>
        of <pdf:pagecount>
    </div>

    <!-- HTML Content -->
    To PDF or not to PDF
</body>
</html>

I then read in this file as a string and attempt to create a pdf:

with open('test.html','r') as f:
    sourceHtml = f.read()
outputFilename = "test.pdf"
resultFile = open(outputFilename , "w+b")
pisaStatus = pisa.CreatePDF(sourceHtml,dest=resultFile)
resultFile.close()

However, I get the following error traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xhtml2pdf\document.py", line 89, in pisaDocument
    encoding, context=context, xml_output=xml_output)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xhtml2pdf\document.py", line 57, in pisaStory
    pisaParser(src, context, default_css, xhtml, encoding, xml_output)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xhtml2pdf\parser.py", line 660, in pisaParser
    context.parseCSS()
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xhtml2pdf\context.py", line 428, in parseCSS
    self.css = self.cssParser.parse(self.cssText)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xhtml2pdf\w3c\cssParser.py", line 431, in parse
    src, stylesheet = self._parseStylesheet(src)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xhtml2pdf\w3c\cssParser.py", line 530, in _parseStylesheet
    src, atResults = self._parseAtKeyword(src)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xhtml2pdf\w3c\cssParser.py", line 650, in _parseAtKeyword
    src, result = self._parseAtPage(src)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xhtml2pdf\w3c\cssParser.py", line 746, in _parseAtPage
    src, atResults = self._parseAtKeyword(src)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xhtml2pdf\w3c\cssParser.py", line 657, in _parseAtKeyword
    src, result = self._parseAtFrame(src)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xhtml2pdf\w3c\cssParser.py", line 766, in _parseAtFrame
    src, properties = self._parseDeclarationGroup(src.lstrip())
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xhtml2pdf\w3c\cssParser.py", line 1017, in _parseDeclarationGroup
    raise self.ParseError('Declaration group closing \'}\' not found', src, ctxsrc)
xhtml2pdf.w3c.cssParser.CSSParseError: Declaration group closing '}' not found:: (u'{           ', u'# Static Frame\n     ')

This seems to imply that there is a missing } in the css code. However it seems fine to me. I am using windows so I thought it might be to do with \r\n line EOLs - but it isn't.

Can anyone see what I'm doing wrong?

Solution

  • The problem you are hitting is completely unrelated to the error, but still involves your CSS.

    Comments in CSS are created using /* and */, not # like in Python. If you remove the "comments" from your file, it is parsed and created by pisa. This is also why your single line example worked, they weren't included.