pp.server - Produce & Publish Server
Project description
pp.server is a Pyramid based server implementation and implements the server side functionality of the Produce & Publish platform. It is known as the Produce & Publish Server.
The Produce & Publish Server provided web service APIs for converting HTML/XML + assets to PDF using one of the following external PDF converters:
PrinceXML (www.princexml.com, commercial)
PDFreactor (www.realobjects.com, commercial)
PhantomJS (free, unsupported)
Speedata Publisher (www.speedata.de, open-source, experimental support)
WKHTMLTOPDF (www.wkhtmltopdf.org, open-source, experimental support)
Vivliostyle Formatter (www.vivliostyle.com, commercial, experimental support)
VersaType Formatter (www.trim-marks.com, commercial, experimental support)
Antennahouse 6.6 (www.antennahouse.com, commercial)
Weasyprint (free, unsupported)
In addition there is experimental support for generating EPUB documents using Calibre (www.calibre.org, open-source).
In addition the Produce & Publish server provides a simple conversion API for converting format A to B (as supported through LibreOffice or OpenOffice). The conversion is build on top of unoconv.
The web service provides only synchronous operation.
Requirements
Python 3.6 or higher, no support for Python 2.x
the external binaries
PrinceXML: prince,
PDFreactor up to version 7: pdfreactor,
PDFreactor version 8 or higher: pdfreactor.py,
Unoconv: unoconv
Speedata Publisher: sp
Calibre: ebook-convert
WKHTMLTOPDF: wkhtmltopdf
Vivliostyle: vivliostyle-formatter
VersaType : versatype-converter
Weasyprint: weasyprint
Antennahouse: run.sh
must be in the $PATH. Please refer to the installation documentation of the individual products.
Installation
create a Python 3 virtual environment using:
python3 -m venv pp.server
install the Produce & Publish server:
bin/pip install pp.server
create a server.ini configuration file (and change it according to your needs):
[DEFAULT] debug = true [app:main] use = egg:pp.server reload_templates = true debug_authorization = false debug_notfound = false [server:main] use = egg:gunicorn#main host = 0.0.0.0 port = 6543 [loggers] keys = root, myproject [handlers] keys = console, logfile [formatters] keys = generic, form01 [formatter_form01] format = %(asctime)s %(levelname)-5.5s [%(name)s:%(lineno)s][%(threadName)s] %(message)s datefmt= class=logging.Formatter [logger_root] level = INFO handlers = console, logfile [logger_myproject] level = DEBUG handlers = qualname = myproject [handler_console] class = StreamHandler args = (sys.stderr,) level = NOTSET formatter = form01 [handler_logfile] class = FileHandler level = INFO formatter = form01 args=('var/gunicorn.log', 'w') [formatter_generic] format = %(asctime)s %(levelname)-5.5s [%(name)s:%(lineno)s][%(threadName)s] %(message)screate a circusd.ini configuration file (and change it according to your needs):
[watcher:gunicorn] cmd = bin/gunicorn --paste server.ini [env:gunicorn] PATH = $PATH TZ = $TZ
both configuration files can be created automatically using the helper script:
bin/pp-server-templates
start the server (in foreground):
bin/gunicorn --paste server.ini
or start it in background:
bin/circusd circusd.ini --daemon
Converter requirements
For the PDF conversion the related converter binaries or scripts must be included in the $PATH of your server.
prince for PrinceXML
pdfreactor for PDFreactor 7
pdfreactor8 for PDFreactor 8 or higher
phantomjs for PhantomJS
wkhtmltopdf for WKHTMLToPDF
ebook-convert for Calibre
sp for the Speedata Publisher
vivliostyle for the Vivliostyle formatter
versatype for the Versatype converter
weasyprint for Weasyprint
antennahouse for the Antennahouse
API documentation
All API methods are available through a REST api following API URL endpoint:
http://host:port/api/1/<command>
With the default server configuration this translates to:
http://localhost:6543/api/1/pdf or http://localhost:6543/api/1/unoconv
Environment variables
pp.server uses the var folder of the installation directory by default as temporary folder for conversion data. Set the environment variable PP_SPOOL_DIRECTORY if you need different spool directory instead.
If you run PDFreactor 10 or higher under Docker then you must set the environment variable PP_PDFREACTOR_DOCKER=1 in order to generated a proper file:///docs/… URI for pdfreactor.py.
PDF conversion API
Remember that all converters use HTML or XML as input for the conversion. All input data (HTML/XML, images, stylesheets, fonts etc.) must be stored in ZIP archive. The filename of the content must be named index.html.
You have to POST the data to the
with the following parameters:
file - the ZIP archive (multi/part encoding)
converter - a string that determines the the PDF converter to be used (either princexml, pdfreactor, phantomjs, vivliostyle, versatype, or calibre for generating EPUB content)
cmd_options - an optional string of command line parameters added as given to the calls of the externals converters
Returns:
The API returns its result as JSON structure with the following key-value pairs:
status - either OK or ERROR
data- the generated PDF file encoded as base64 encoded byte string
output - the conversion transcript (output of the converter run)
Unoconv conversion API
The unoconv web service wraps the OpenOffice/LibreOffice server mode in order to perform document conversion (mainly used in the Produce & Publish world for convertering DOC(X) documents to HTML/XML).
Remember that all converters use HTML or XML as input for the conversion. All input data (HTML/XML, images, stylesheets, fonts etc.) must be stored in ZIP archive. The filename of the content must be named index.html.
You have to POST the data to the
with the following parameters:
file - the source files (multi/part encoding)
cmd_options - an optional string of command line parameters added as given to the unoconv calls
Returns:
The API returns its result as JSON structure with the following key-value pairs:
status - either OK or ERROR
data - the converted output files as ZIP archive (e.g. a DOCX file containing images will be converted to a HTML file plus the list of extract image files)
output - the conversion transcript (output of the converter run)
Introspection API methods
Produce & Publish server version:
returns:
{“version”: “0.3.2”, “module”: “pp.server”}
Installed/available converters:
returns:
{“unoconv”: true, “pdfreactor”: true, “phantomjs”: false, “calibre”: true, “princexml”: true}
Versions of installed converter:
returns:
{‘princexml’: ‘Version x.y’, ‘pdfreactor: ‘Version a.b.c’, …}
Other API methods
Cleanup of the queue directory (removes conversion data older than one day)
returns:
{“directories_removed”: 22}
Advanced installation issues
Installation of PDFreactor using zc.buildout
Installation of PrinceXML using zc.buildout
Source code
Bug tracker
Support
Support for Produce & Publish Server is currently only available on a project basis.
License
pp.server is published under the GNU Public License V2 (GPL 2).
Contact
2.0.4 (2019/02/11)
minor installation issues with var folder gunicorn.log
added optional PP_PDFREACTOR_DOCKER environment support
2.0.3 (2019/02/11)
minor installation issues with var folder gunicorn.log
added optional PP_SPOOL_DIRECTORY environment support
2.0.0 (2018/07/14)
major cleanup
removed async functionality
switched from waitress to gunicorn
switched from subprocess to easyprocess
webpage displays installed converters and their versions
support for VersaType converter added
1.0.8 (2017/10/23)
internal release
1.0.7 (2017/08/17)
fixed a very old bug in cleanup code
1.0.6 (2017/08/08)
display available converters during startup
1.0.5 (2017/04/06)
support for WeasyPrint
1.0.3 (2017/02/13)
calling princexml with explicit option -o (Prince 11 compatibility)
1.0.0 (2017/01/08)
first official release
requires Python 3.5 or higher
0.7.13 (2016/08/30)
added circus dependency in order to provide daemonizing support out of the box
0.7.12 (2016/08/29)
fix for PDFreactor 8
0.7.11 (2016/06/01)
updated to Pyramid 1.7
0.7.7 (2016/01/24)
updated support for latest Vivliostyle formatter
added support for Antennahouse Formatter
0.7.6 (2015/11/30)
support for PDFreactor 8
0.7.5 (2015/11/18)
fixed race condition while creating directories
0.7.4 (2015/11/14)
support for nested uploaded ZIP files
0.7.3 (2015/11/14)
support for Vivliostyle Formatter
0.7.2 (2015/04/20)
merged https://bitbucket.org/ajung/pp.server/pull-request/1/ (improper check for wkhtmltopdf)
merged https://bitbucket.org/ajung/pp.server/pull-request/2/ (fix for async operations)
0.7.1 (2015/03/13)
unicode fix in runcmd()
0.7.0 (2015/02/15)
0.6.x was completely badly packaged
changed repo structure
0.6.1 (2015/02/02)
add /api/converter-versions to webservice API
0.6.0 (2015/01/26)
dropped Python 2.X support, Python 3.3 or higher is now a mandatory requirement
0.5.5 (2015/01/23)
UTF8 handling fix
0.5.3 (2014/11/23)
support for WKHTMLTOPDF
0.5.2 (2014/11/19)
support for Speedata Publisher
0.5.1 (2014/10/12)
improved error handling
0.5.0 (2014/10/12)
official Python 3.3/3.4 support
0.4.7 (25.09.2014)
fixed documentation bug
0.4.6 (22.08.2014)
removed PDFreactor –addlog option
0.4.5 (22.08.2014)
added supplementary commandline options to pdfreactor commandline call
0.4.4 (24.01.2014)
minor typos fixed
0.4.3 (20.01.2014)
implemented automatic queue cleanup after one day
0.4.2 (18.01.2014)
URL fix in index.pt related to virtual hosting
0.4.1 (13.01.2014)
show Python version and converters on index.pt
authorization support added
0.4.0 (17.10.2013)
Python 3.3 support
Pyramid 1.5 support
0.3.5 (05.10.2013)
added ‘cmd_options’ to pdf and unoconv API methods for specifying arbitary command line parameters for the external converters
0.3.4 (05.10.2013)
added ‘cleanup’ API
0.3.3 (05.10.2013)
added ‘version’ and ‘converter’ API methods
0.3.2 (04.10.2013)
added support EPUB conversion using Calibre
0.3.1 (03.10.2013)
updated documentation
0.3.0 (14.07.2013)
unoconv conversion now returns a ZIP archive (e.g. a HTML file + extracted images)
0.2.7 (06.07.2013)
added support for Phantom.js converter
0.2.5 (05.07.2013)
better detecting of prince and pdfreactor binaries
0.2.2 (05.07.2013)
updated the documentation
minor cleanup
0.2.1 (04.07.2013)
re-added poll API
0.2.0 (03.07.2013)
converted XML-RPC api to REST api
0.1.9 (01.07.2013)
monkeypatch pyramid_xmlrpc.parse_xmlrpc_request in order to by-pass its stupid DOS request body check
0.1.7 (29.06.2013)
more tests
fixes
updated documentation
0.1.5 (27.06.2013)
test for synchronous operations
fixes
0.1.0 (24.06.2013)
initial release
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