[reportlab-users] proper way to make pdfs in zope

[Christopher N. Deckard]

Hello,
I want to generate custom PDFs with reportlab in Zope.  I've
rewritten rlzope to handle what I'm doing, and it works, but I don't
know if it's the proper way to do it.  IMO, it's a kludge.

Since I can't exactly import anything useful from reportlab into a
Python Script in Zope, I change rlzope to exec() a string of code
that I write in a PScript.  I set up the beforeDrawPage() to put a
header on each page.  My code that I exec may look something like
this:

  self.append(Spacer(0, 20))
  self.append(Table([[]])
  self.append(PageBreak())
  self.append(Spacer(0, 20))
  self.append(Table([[]])
  self.append(PageBreak())
  self.append(Spacer(0, 20))
  self.append(Table([[]]))
  self.append(PageBreak())
  self.append(Spacer(0, 20))
  self.append(Table([[]]))
  self.append(PageBreak())

where [[]] is some list of people information like Name, Address,
Phone, Email.

I then call rlzope like this from the PScript:

  container.rlzope(toExec=toExec)

With the Zope security restrictions on importing things, I don't see
a better way to make use of the other RL stuff without doing it like
this.

Thoughts/comments/flames appreciated.

Thanks,
-Chris