# #155 Generate, store, email PDF invoices. DocRaptor API, HTML to PDF, ActiveStorage, ActionMailer

- URL: https://superails.com/posts/155-generate-store-email-pdf-invoices-docraptor-api-html-to-pdf-activestorage-actionmailer
- Published: 2023-12-04
- Duration: 39:35
- Access: free
- Topics: pdf, docraptor, api

Let's solve a classic problem: generate an invoice and email it as PDF to a client.

Historically I would do it with gem wicked_pdf. But the underlying technology wkhtmltopdf is now Archived!

So, we need to find other solutions.

DocRaptor is an affordable API wrapper around the expensive Prince technology, that gives you a lot of options for rendering and storing PDF.

Episode source code: https://github.com/corsego/155-docraptor/commit/0cce2a5367ae4222fc5bd3bc8f70f1a75f75ebe1
Based on this blogpost: https://blog.corsego.com/docraptor-html-to-pdf
Podcast talking about Docraptor: https://www.indierails.com/15
Docraptor gem: https://github.com/DocRaptor/docraptor-ruby
Docraptor ruby docs: https://docraptor.com/documentation/ruby
DocRaptor: https://docraptor.com

P.S. In the episode I forgot to mention another powerful feature that I love: generating a PDF from an URL.
P.S.2. Docraptor pricing is per document, not per page!

0:00 The PDF problem
4:50 Demo of Invoice app
6:15 Generate a PDF with DocRaptor
10:20 Generate an Invoice PDF 
13:15 PDF layout file
14:51 Store PDF with ActiveStorage
21:37 Preview, download PDF
27:15 Email the PDF
30:47 DocRaptor document hosting
34:50 Final Demo
37:50 Final thoughts

## Chapters

- 0:00 The PDF problem
- 4:50 Demo of Invoice app
- 6:15 Generate a PDF with DocRaptor
- 10:20 Generate an Invoice PDF
- 13:15 PDF layout file
- 14:51 Store PDF with ActiveStorage
- 21:37 Preview, download PDF
- 27:15 Email the PDF
- 30:47 DocRaptor document hosting
- 34:50 Final Demo
- 37:50 Final thoughts