WeasyPrint

68.1 · active · verified Mon Apr 06

WeasyPrint is an actively maintained Python library (current version 68.1) that transforms HTML and CSS documents into high-quality PDF files. It acts as an 'Awesome Document Factory' by rendering web content using web standards, making it suitable for generating reports, invoices, books, and other printable documents with precise layout control. Releases are frequent, often several times a year.

Warnings

breaking WeasyPrint versions 67.0 and higher require Python 3.10 or newer. Python 3.9 and older are no longer supported.
Fix: Upgrade your Python environment to 3.10 or later. Consider using a virtual environment.
breaking The `default_url_fetcher()` function is deprecated since v68.0 and will be removed in v69.0. Additionally, custom URL fetchers returning dictionaries are deprecated; they should return `URLFetcherResponse` objects instead.
Fix: Migrate custom URL fetchers to use the new `URLFetcher` class and ensure they return `URLFetcherResponse` instances.
breaking WeasyPrint 63.0 replaced its underlying HTML parsing library `html5lib` with `tinyhtml5`. While `tinyhtml5` is a fork of `html5lib`, specific advanced features or internal APIs of `html5lib` may no longer be available or behave differently.
Fix: Update your code to be compatible with `tinyhtml5` if you were relying on `html5lib`-specific behaviors or public APIs other than basic parsing. Review the `tinyhtml5` documentation for differences.
gotcha WeasyPrint relies on external system libraries like Pango, Cairo, and GDK-Pixbuf (often provided by GTK+ on Windows) for rendering. These are *not* installed by `pip` and must be installed separately based on your operating system.
Fix: Consult the WeasyPrint documentation for platform-specific installation instructions for these system dependencies (e.g., `apt install libpango-1.0-0` on Debian/Ubuntu, `brew install pango libffi` on macOS, or MSYS2/GTK+ on Windows).
gotcha Using WeasyPrint with untrusted HTML or CSS can lead to various security vulnerabilities, including local file access, system information leaks, and infinite network requests/loops.
Fix: Sanitize all untrusted input thoroughly. For server-side usage, implement a custom URL fetcher with strict access controls and timeouts, and be mindful of `file://` URIs.
gotcha Some antivirus software may incorrectly flag WeasyPrint as malware (false positive).
Fix: Report the false positive to your antivirus vendor. This is a known issue documented by the WeasyPrint team.

Install

pip install weasyprint Basic Python Installation
sudo apt install weasyprint Ubuntu/Debian (recommended)
brew install python pango libffi pip install weasyprint macOS (Homebrew)
Follow the official documentation for GTK+ installation using MSYS2, then: pip install weasyprint Windows (requires GTK+)

Imports

HTML
```
from weasyprint import HTML
```
CSS
```
from weasyprint import HTML, CSS
```
default_url_fetcher
```
from weasyprint import default_url_fetcher
```
`default_url_fetcher()` is deprecated in v68.0. For custom URL fetching, use the new `URLFetcher` class. Returning dicts from custom fetchers will be removed in v69.0.

Quickstart

This quickstart demonstrates how to convert a simple HTML string with embedded CSS into a PDF file using WeasyPrint. You can also load HTML from a URL or a local file. The `write_pdf` method saves the rendered document to the specified filename.

from weasyprint import HTML, CSS

html_content = """
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>My Document</title>
    <style>
        @page { size: A4; margin: 2cm; }
        body { font-family: sans-serif; }
        h1 { color: #336699; }
        p { line-height: 1.5; }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Hello, WeasyPrint!</h1>
    <p>This is a test document generated from HTML and CSS into a PDF.</p>
    <img src="https://weasyprint.org/static/logo.png" alt="WeasyPrint Logo">
</body>
</html>
"""

# You can also load from a URL: HTML('https://weasyprint.org/')
# Or from a file: HTML(filename='my_document.html')

# Create an HTML object from a string
html = HTML(string=html_content)

# Optionally, add external CSS (or inline as shown above)
# css = CSS(filename='style.css') # or CSS(string='body { font-size: 12pt; }')

# Write the PDF to a file
html.write_pdf('output.pdf')

print("PDF generated successfully as output.pdf")

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