get cairosvg working in windows

Question

Trying to get this code working:

import cairosvg
import os

path = "D:/PyProjects/Bla/Temp"
os.chdir(path)

cairosvg.svg2pdf(url='Pic.svg', write_to='image.pdf')

but get errors along similar to this post:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:/work/lean_python/pdf/other.py", line 2, in <module>
    import cairosvg
  File "D:\env_python352\lib\site-packages\cairosvg\__init__.py", line 29, in <module>
    from . import surface
  File "D:\env_python352\lib\site-packages\cairosvg\surface.py", line 24, in <module>
    import cairocffi as cairo
  File "D:\env_python352\lib\site-packages\cairocffi\__init__.py", line 46, in <module>
    cairo = dlopen(ffi, 'cairo', 'cairo-2')
  File "D:\env_python352\lib\site-packages\cairocffi\__init__.py", line 43, in dlopen
    raise OSError("dlopen() failed to load a library: %s" % ' / '.join(names))
OSError: dlopen() failed to load a library: cairo / cairo-2

The post mentions:

CairoSVG (the python library and bindings) needs Cairo (The C library, part of GTK+) to run. It appears you don't have it an it's headers installed on your system.

So I followed step 1 - 5 described here. I now have cairo header files in:

C:\msys64\mingw64\include\cairo

I also installed pycairo recommended by another source:

pip install pycairo-1.15.2-cp36-cp36m-win_amd64.whl

I still get the above errors. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Please check the path of libcairo-2.dll with the ctypes.util.
In my case, It was a directory of old software called Graphviz.

python
>>> import ctypes.util
>>> path = ctypes.util.find_library('libcairo-2')
>>> print(path)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Graphviz 2.28\bin\libcairo-2.dll

After uninstalling Graphviz.

python
>>> import ctypes.util
>>> path = ctypes.util.find_library('libcairo-2')
>>> print(path)
C:\msys64\mingw64\bin\libcairo-2.dll

Answer 2

The following workaround works for me:

• install cairosvg (python -m pip install cairosvg)
• run import cairosvg in a script.
• if it works, you're set. otherwise (OSError: no library called "cairo" was found):
• get a copy of libcairo-2.dll
  • I did this by installing from uniconvertor-2.0rc4-win64_headless.msi https://sk1project.net/uc2/download/
  • then look for where libcairo-2.dll was installed to.
• say the path is C:\path\cairo\dlls\libcairo-2.dll
• in your script add to the top (before import cairosvg)

import os os.environ['path'] += r';C:\path\cairo\dlls'

• import cairosvg should now succeed and work.

(Assumes you are running 64bit version of Python, otherwise use win32_headless.msi)

Answer 3

I just do not get cairosvg to work. I found an alternative way to transform an svg into a png using the svglib package.

from svglib.svglib import svg2rlg
from reportlab.graphics import renderPDF, renderPM
import os

path = "D:/Bla/Temp"
os.chdir(path)

drawing = svg2rlg("Pic.svg")
renderPM.drawToFile(drawing, "Pic.png")