ReportLab is a tool for creating complex data-driven PDF documents and custom vector graphics
but this tool does not support arabic, so when you want add an arabic text you will see something like
so how can we fix this
in this article i will show you an example how to add an arabic text with reportlab using reportlab.platypus
let's start ...
Install ReportLab
if you have both pip and python installed so its easy just do this
pip install reportlab
Let's import the reportlab packages that we are going to use
from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.platypus import Paragraph, SimpleDocTemplate, Spacer,PageBreak
from reportlab.lib.styles import ParagraphStyle
from reportlab.pdfbase import pdfmetrics
import reportlab
from reportlab.pdfbase.ttfonts import TTFont
Install arabic-reshaper and python-bidi
we will need this two packages to reshape our text so just go to your command line and type
pip install arabic_reshaper
pip install python-bidi
now we can import this two packages by adding this two lines of code
import arabic_reshaper
from bidi.algorithm import get_display
Using a custom font
here we need to use a custom font because the default font in reportlab does not support arabic im using this font 29ltbukraregular !
now let's add the font and give it the name of Arabic
pdfmetrics.registerFont(TTFont('Arabic', 'path to the font directory/29ltbukraregular.ttf'))
Styling the text
first let's initialize our stylesheet
#init the style sheet
styles = getSampleStyleSheet()
now let's start styling our text
arabic_text_style = ParagraphStyle(
'border', # border on
parent = styles['Normal'] , # Normal is a defaul style in getSampleStyleSheet
borderColor= '#333333',
borderWidth = 1,
borderPadding = 2,
fontName="Arabic" #previously we named our custom font "Arabic"
)
Add the text
most of the time you will want to add more than a one paragraph to your file so we can use an array which contain our paragraphs let's name it storys
storys = []
now let's add some paragraphs to our pdf document we will use ** Spacer ** to set the space between paragraphs
arabic_text =""" عندما يريد العالم أن يتكلّم ، فهو يتحدّث بلغة
يونيكود. تسجّل الآن لحضور المؤتمر الدولي العاشر ليونيكود (Unicode Conference)، الذي سيعقد في 10-12 آذار 1997 بمدينة مَايِنْتْس، ألمانيا. و سيجمع المؤتمر بين خبراء
من كافة قطاعات الصناعة على الشبكة العالمية انترنيت ويونيكود، حيث ستتم، على الصعيدين الدولي والمحلي على حد سواء مناقشة سبل استخدام يونكود في النظم القائمة وفيما يخص التطبيقات الحاسوبية، الخطوط، تصميم النصوص والحوسبة متعددة اللغات."""
# reshape the text
rehaped_text = arabic_reshaper.reshape(arabic_text)
bidi_text = get_display(rehaped_text)
# add the text to pdf
## dont forget to add the style arabic_text_style
storys.append(Paragraph(bidi_text,arabic_text_style))
storys.append(Spacer(1,8)) # set the space here
storys.append(Paragraph(bidi_text,arabic_text_style))
finally we will use *** SimpleDocTemlate *** to create the document and save it
doc = SimpleDocTemplate('mydoc.pdf',pagesize = letter)
## add the storys array to the pdf document
doc.build(storys)
and this is our final resul perfect ...!
But why we need to use arabic-reshaper and python-bidi !
if you use just the arabic-reshaper
rehaped_text = arabic_reshaper.reshape(arabic_text)
storys.append(Paragraph(rehaped_text,arabic_text_style))
storys.append(Spacer(1,8))
storys.append(Paragraph(rehaped_text,arabic_text_style))
and if we only use bidi
bidi_text = get_display(arabic-text)
storys.append(Paragraph(bidi_text,arabic_text_style))
storys.append(Spacer(1,8))
storys.append(Paragraph(bidi_text,arabic_text_style))
For Further exploration
reportlab can be used with djago to generate pdf files and reports and this is a link if you want learn more click here
if you want know more about reportlab check the repotlab user guide
Top comments (5)
Thank you bro, you saved my day
your welcome , any feedbacks !
Thank you! but I face a problem when the text contains "الله" word! any idea how to solve this problem?
hi @Arwa can you text me on my twitter twitter.com/Abderrahmaneend
or send me an email here abdmusttoumi@gmail.com
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