Prawn gem: How to create the .pdf from an *existing* file (.xls)

Question

Hi there,

Can anybody show me (maybe copy/paste a simple code example) how to create the .pdf file from an existing (.xls) file, using the Prawn gem? (Basically, I'd need the command that "opens" the existing file.)

(I'm asking because the Prawn documentation (http://prawn.majesticseacreature.com/docs/) seems to be gone since quite a while - it's not even usable via Google cache...)

Thanks a lot for any help with this! Tom

Answer 1

Turns out the Prawn gem cannot handle existing files...

Answer 2

Prawn can be used to render content on top of a PDF. You're talking about .xls, a completely different format.

Answer 3

I'd suggest that you break the problem down.

1. Can you read xls with Ruby? Possibly, but it's flaky at best. However, you can easily read csv, and xls exports nicely to that format.

2. Can you write a 'table' of values to a prawn pdf? Yes

So, (almost) all you need is a little program that can parse a csv file into a prawn-friendly table-structure and then hand it off to Prawn for generation.