Wicked Pdf VS Webpacker

You have a few options when trying to create a PDF in a Rails environment. Prawn and Wicked PDF have been around for quite a while. I have been using both gems and they work fine. However, they have a few limitations that can make it difficult to handle more complex PDFs. I recently discovered Grover, which can remediate some of this inflexibility in creating PDFs.

# WickedPDF Global Configuration # # Use this to set up shared configuration options for your entire application. # Any of the configuration options shown here can also be applied to single # models by passing arguments to the `render :pdf` call. # # To learn more, check out the README: # # https://github.com/mileszs/wicked_pdf/blob/master/README.md WickedPdf.config ||= {} WickedPdf.config.merge!({ layout: "pdf.html.erb", orientation: "Landscape", lowquality: true, zoom: 1, dpi: 75 })

A couple of popular gems to convert HTML to PDF in Rails are PDFKit and WickedPDF. They both use a command line utility called wkhtmltopdf under the hood; which uses WebKit to render a PDF from HTML.

Thanks for sharing - it takes a lot to share these sort of personal experiences. I've definitely been there, too.

Aside from all the good and valid comments about reducing scope and shipping an MVP, I'd like to raise another point which may be controversial (or even wrong), but still worth raising:

Would it have been different if you had used Rails? A few of the problems you mention (rich text editing, validation, and to some extend, pdf exports) are very easily solved in Rails. Take rich text editing: It's literally a couple minutes to use ActionText. Or validations / forms, there's really not much work to do. PDF exports are also not too hard via wicked_pdf [1] if you're okay with fixing some formatting quirks later on.

I've seen both worlds by writing tons of JS / React code myself, and at that time (2016-2018) those problems were almost an order of magnitude more time-costly to implement in SPAs. I remember react-router.. not great memories.

Of course, all the points reducing MVP scope still hold, yadda yadda, but.. if you could have had all those features (nearly) for free, would you be at another stage now? Who knows.

[1] https://github.com/mileszs/wicked_pdf

Using Webpacker in Rails provides several advantages over the traditional asset pipeline. First, Webpacker uses JavaScript modules, which allows for better code organization and improved code reusability. Second, it offers modern frontend build tools, such as Babel and PostCSS, for transforming and compiling assets. Third, it provides faster build times and faster runtime performance through code splitting and lazy loading. Fourth, it offers better integration with JavaScript frameworks such as React, Vue, and Angular. Overall, Webpacker offers a more flexible and modern asset management solution for Rails applications. And while Webpacker is being retired, this initiative is to consolidate our code accordingly before moving our bundler to another solution.

This article is replace Webpacker with Simpacker and webpack.

Took me 2 days to find this bug report: https://github.com/rails/webpacker/issues/3188 (thanks again tagliala)

But it's there in the webpacker README now, if anyone hasn't seen it. https://github.com/rails/webpacker

source 'https://rubygems.org' git_source(:github) { |repo| "https://github.com/#{repo}.git" } ruby '2.7.3' # Bundle edge Rails instead: gem 'rails', github: 'rails/rails' gem 'rails', '~> 6.0.3', '>= 6.0.3.7' gem 'mongoid', git: 'https://github.com/mongodb/mongoid.git' # Use Puma as the app server gem 'puma', '~> 4.1' # Use SCSS for stylesheets gem 'sass-rails', '>= 6' # Transpile app-like JavaScript. Read more: https://github.com/rails/webpacker gem 'webpacker', '~> 4.0' # Turbolinks makes navigating your web application faster. Read more: https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks gem 'turbolinks', '~> 5' # Build JSON APIs with ease. Read more: https://github.com/rails/jbuilder gem 'jbuilder', '~> 2.7' # Use Redis adapter to run Action Cable in production # gem 'redis', '~> 4.0' # Use Active Model has_secure_password # Use Active Storage variant # gem 'image_processing', '~> 1.2' gem 'axlsx' gem 'caxlsx_rails' #Bootstrap for UI gem 'bootstrap', '~> 5.1.0' gem 'bootstrap-timepicker-rails', '~> 0.1.3' gem 'bootstrap-select-rails', '~> 1.6', '>= 1.6.3' #JQuery Rails gem 'jquery-rails' gem 'rails_12factor', group: :production # Reduces boot times through caching; required in config/boot.rb gem 'bootsnap', '>= 1.4.2', require: false group :development, :test do # Call 'byebug' anywhere in the code to stop execution and get a debugger console gem 'byebug', platforms: [:mri, :mingw, :x64_mingw] end group :development do # Access an interactive console on exception pages or by calling 'console' anywhere in the code. gem 'web-console', '>= 3.3.0' gem 'listen', '~> 3.2' gem 'pry' # Spring speeds up development by keeping your application running in the background. Read more: https://github.com/rails/spring gem 'spring' gem 'spring-watcher-listen', '~> 2.0.0' end group :test do # Adds support for Capybara system testing and selenium driver gem 'capybara', '>= 2.15' gem 'selenium-webdriver' # Easy installation and use of web drivers to run system tests with browsers gem 'webdrivers' gem 'cucumber-rails', require: false gem 'database_cleaner' end # Windows does not include zoneinfo files, so bundle the tzinfo-data gem gem 'tzinfo-data', platforms: [:mingw, :mswin, :x64_mingw, :jruby] #HTTParty for RESTful API calls gem 'httparty' #Paperclip for storing files gem 'paperclip' gem "mongoid-paperclip", :require => "mongoid_paperclip" gem "letter_opener", :group => :development r

As you may have heard by now, Rails 7 comes out of the box with importmap-rails and the mighty Webpacker is no longer the default for new Rails applications.

Webpacker

i mean the webpacker gem is core rails though. unless you are saying that is not supported very well? https://github.com/rails/webpacker