4.2.4.1. Converting HTML to PDF

Reports which have a template in HTML format and the PDF output format do not always properly display fonts. To resolve this, add cuba/fonts subdirectory with required .ttf fonts to the Middleware configuration directory (tomcat/conf/app-core in default deployment configuration). Additionally, you can use existing operating system fonts by specifying their path in the reporting.fontsDir application property.

In order to resolve the fonts issue on a Ubuntu server, you should do the following:

  • Install the ttf-mscorefonts-installer package:

    $ sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer

  • Set the reporting.fontsDir application property:

    reporting.fontsDir = /usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts

  • Explicitly specify fonts in HTML templates, for example:

<html>
<head>
    <style type="text/css">
 * { font-family: Times New Roman; }
    </style>

Another thing to mention is parsing of special characters. To avoid errors when converting HTML to PDF, it is recommended to wrap your fields in <![CDATA[ ]]> construction in your HTML template file:

<tr>
        <td> <![CDATA[${(row.fields('book_name'))!?string!}]]> </td>
        <td> <![CDATA[${(row.fields('author'))!?string!}]]> </td>
</tr>