WeasyPrint

Project Overview

WeasyPrint calls itself the awesome document factory, helping web developers turn simple HTML pages into gorgeous statistical reports, invoices, and tickets as PDF. Technically it is a visual rendering engine for HTML and CSS that exports to PDF, aiming to support web standards for printing; its CSS layout engine is written in Python, designed for pagination, and depends on no full engine like WebKit or Gecko.

If you can write HTML and CSS, you can produce beautifully typeset PDFs.

Key Features

• HTML to PDF: hand it a URL or HTML file and get a paginated PDF
• CSS pagination engine: the layout engine is built for print pagination, with headers, footers, and page numbers
• Print standard support: implements print-oriented CSS features such as @page rules
• Font handling: web fonts and system fonts can be used and embedded
• Python API: generate PDFs on the server with a single call
• Standalone core: no browser engine dependency, light to deploy and easy to extend

Target Audience

• Backend developers generating reports and invoices
• Ops teams archiving web content as PDF
• Developers of publishing and ticket-printing systems
• Web engineers who want to reuse their CSS layout skills

Quick Start

1. Install

pip install weasyprint

2. Render a PDF in Python

from weasyprint import HTML

HTML('report.html').write_pdf('report.pdf')

3. Or convert directly from the command line

weasyprint report.html report.pdf

Core Advantages

• Reuse web skills: layout is expressed in plain HTML and CSS, no new template language to learn
• Born for pagination: page numbers and page-break control are supported natively
• No browser dependency: a pure Python layout engine keeps server deployment light

System Requirements

Notes

• Not a browser: JavaScript is not executed, dynamic content must be rendered to static HTML first
• System libraries: install Pango on Linux servers first, missing libs cause startup errors