PDF Generation With Reportlab

[Albert Leibbrandt]

Hi All

I am hoping there is someone out there that knows reportlab quite well.
I posted this on the reportlab mailing list but there is not much
activity on that list

I am currently generating a pdf report using reportlab 2.3 and python
2.5.4. The report has a table that spans multiple pages. My problem is
that the portions on the table that continues after the first page, is
starting at a point not defined by me, so it creates a layer over the
logo which is on each page.
How do I specify the starting point of each page the table spans ?
Normally I would use pagebreak and spacers but I cannot figure out how
to fit this into the table structure. I also looked at using the
myLaterPages function, but it does not seem that I can do this with the
canvas.

Here is a small extract of my current code

doc = SimpleDocTemplate("test.pdf")
Story = [Spacer(1, mm * 60)]
#populate story with first page

record_data = []
for var1, var2, var3, var4, var5 in cursor.fetchall():
Story.append(PageBreak())
Story.append(Spacer(1, mm * 15))
Story.append(Paragraph(var1, heading1))
Story.append(Spacer(1, mm * 5))
Story.append(Paragraph(var2, description))
Story.append(Spacer(1, mm * 5))
record_data.append([Paragraph('Header 1', grid_header),
Paragraph('Header 2', grid_header), Paragraph('Header 3', grid_header),
Paragraph('Header 4', grid_header), Paragraph('Header 5', grid_header)])

record_data.append([Paragraph(var1, grid), Paragraph(var2, grid),
Paragraph(var3, grid), Paragraph(var4, grid), Paragraph(var5, grid)])

t = Table(record_data, style=[('GRID', (0, 0), (-1, - 1), 0.5,
colors.HexColor('#00204E'))], colWidths=[65, 220, 50, 50, 40])
Story.append(t)

doc.build(Story, onFirstPage=myFirstPage, onLaterPages=myLaterPages)


myFirstPage and MyLaterPages are functions that use the canvas to draw
the page header and footer.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
Albert

 

[Albert Leibbrandt]

Never the less, that is the correct forum for this question. The ReportLab
mailing list is operated and manned by ReportLab employees. They know the
code better than anyone.


Are you talking about something more sophisticated than setting the
topMargin property in the SimpleDocTemplate constructor? If you have a
logo on each page, you'd want your top margin to exclude that logo. The
default top margin is 1 inch. If that's not enough, extend it. If you
need different margins on different pages, then you need something more
sophisticated than SimpleDocTemplate.


Page breaks and spacers are absolutely the wrong way to handle this. Think
about this as a Word document. If you want to exclude the logo, you'd
change the top margin to protect it.

Thanks a mil Tim, your reply actually gave me what I was looking for.
too little sleep on my part ...

Cheers
Albert