pdfkit django in digitalocean - django

Question

pdfkit works in the local machine everything works successfully displays as pdf, but in digitalocean sends to the server error 500, why?
views.py
from django.shortcuts import render, redirect, get_object_or_404
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.template.loader import get_template
import pdfkit
from .models import Buses
def pdf(request, id):
bus = Buses.objects.get(id=id)
template = get_template('buses/pdf.html')
html = template.render({'bus': bus})
options = {
'page-size': 'Letter',
'encoding': "UTF-8",
}
pdf = pdfkit.from_string(html, False, options)
response = HttpResponse(pdf, content_type='application/pdf')
response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename="{}_{}.pdf"'.format(bus.company, bus.name)
return response

Answer 1

If your template references other files, you may need to set 'enable-local-file-access': True in your options.
See: https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltopdf/issues/4460

Answer 2

I am not sure but your problem could be the location of wkhtmltopdf
It is always a better option to specify the wkhtmltopdf location. So on your digital ocean server - start by installing wkhtmltopdf - if you dont have it yet.
This is a great tutorial to use for any version of Ubuntu - https://computingforgeeks.com/install-wkhtmltopdf-on-ubuntu-debian-linux/
Then on your command line:
which wkhtmltopdf
Note the location, your code will then look like this:
from django.shortcuts import render, redirect, get_object_or_404
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.template.loader import get_template
import pdfkit
from .models import Buses
def pdf(request, id):
bus = Buses.objects.get(id=id)
template = get_template('buses/pdf.html')
html = template.render({'bus': bus})
options = {
'page-size': 'Letter',
'encoding': "UTF-8",
}
config = pdfkit.configuration(wkhtmltopdf='/usr/local/bin/wkhtmltopdf') #use your actual location here
pdf = pdfkit.from_string(html, False, configuration=config, options=options)
response = HttpResponse(pdf, content_type='application/pdf')
response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename="{}_{}.pdf"'.format(bus.company, bus.name)
return response