[reportlab-users] Embedding Platypus Story in Canvas

[Tim Roberts]

Rich Shepard wrote:

>   I've written the report cover page as a platypus story, but have the

> rest

> of the report writing directly to the canvas. I'd like this to be a

> single

> pdf file, with page numbers beginning immediately after the cover page.

>

>   The function begins with

>

>     Title = self.rptinfo

>     pg = canvas.Canvas(Title, pagesize=LETTER)

>

> and I proceed to define a platypus story and table. This ends with

>

>     doc.build(story)

>

> but that prints the document, if I correctly understand the dynamics.


Well, ReportLab doesn't actually print anything.  By default, the
"build" method calls Canvas.save() to generate the PDF, but you can
override that by setting doc._doSave = 0.  Then you can do
doc.canv.showPage() and start drawing more stuff.  You could even derive
your own class from SimpleDocTemplate, and override afterInit or
beforeDocument to set that.



>   While I'm at it, am I correct that I can print the pagination by

>

>     pgnum = pg.getPageNumber()

>     pg.drawCentredString(306,36,pgnum)

>     pg.showPage()


That should work.  I usually store the page size in a global somewhere,
and then do
    pg.drawCentredString( PageSize[0] / 2, 36, pgnum )
so I can switch to landscape, for example, without great pain.

-- 
Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.