Latex Report Server

A flask blueprint based server that accepts json, render it on latex template and compile it and send back the pdf.

Author

Piti Ongmongkolkul

License

Public Domain

Requirements

• Python 3.5+. We need this for a sensible subprocess module. Not just 3 but 3.5.
• All other stuff in requirements.txt
• xelatex (Texlive should work in most cases)

TLDR;

• first make sure you have python 3.5 and xelatex installed. Preferably using virtualenv or something along that line.
• pip install -r requirements.txt
• python app.py
• Point your browser to
  • http://localhost:5000/basic/sample
  • http://localhost:5000/ultimate/sample
  • If you want to try this out with postman
    • Post {x: "aaa", y: "bbb"} to http://localhost:5000/basic

Making a New Template

• See templates/ for examples.
• The template engine is a customized jinja2. See latex_jinja.py for the full syntax.
  • Basic ones are
    • Variable ((( varname )))
    • Block ((* for x in l *))
• The format is copied from http://flask.pocoo.org/snippets/55/ . The choice is intended so that the template is self is a valid tex document so one can use latex editor to edit it.

Making a New Blueprint

• use blueprint.make_blueprint(name, templatemodule)
• See app.py for example

Helper

• To help develop the template the script test_template.py is provided.
• The script will try to the template module provided and put it in tmp

Docker

The docker file is provided. The tex-live there is a small one. A lot of package and fonts are not installed by default. If your file doesn't compile this might be the reason.

	docker run -p 5000:5000 .

Todo

• make it a pypi package the only method needed to export is really blueprint.make_blueprint