ReportLab Paragraph and text formatting

Question

My issue is that when using reportlab to generate a simple text document it loses all of the formatting. I've run it through a few times to try and debug it and the issue seems to be, when passing the msgStr to Paragraph it loses all of the formatting sent with it.

Does anyone know how to generate a simple pdf whilst maintaining the current text formatting

Code:

# PDF GENERATION LIBRARIES
# import the report lab PDF generation tools
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.lib.styles import ParagraphStyle
from reportlab.lib.units import inch
from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph, Spacer, PageBreak
from reportlab.pdfbase import pdfmetrics
from reportlab.pdfbase.ttfonts import TTFont
Parts = []

def sumFile(msgStr = None, COMPLETE = 0):

    pdfmetrics.registerFont(TTFont('Inconsolata', 'Inconsolata-Regular.ttf'))

    summaryName = SimpleDocTemplate(vehID+".pdf")

    style = ParagraphStyle(
        name='Normal',
        fontName='Inconsolata',
        fontSize=8,
    )

    msgStr.replace('\n','<br />')

    if msgStr == "PageBreak":
        parts.append(PageBreak())
    else:
        parts.append(msgStr)

    if COMPLETE == 1:
        genStr = "Generated using " + progName + " " + str(progVers)
        parts.append(genStr)
        print parts
        summaryName.build(Paragraph(parts, style))

if __name__ == "__main__":    
    sumFile("%9s %s\n" % ("Bobby", "Sue"))
    sumFile("{0:12}{1:7}{2:5}deg_C\tsmp {3}\n".format("20", "1000", "3.0", "535"))
    sumFile("{0} {1}\n\n".format("09/06/2016", "11:51:39"))

Answer 1

I hope this is what you are looking for :)

# PDF GENERATION LIBRARIES
# import the report lab PDF generation tools
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.lib.styles import ParagraphStyle
from reportlab.lib.units import inch
from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph, Spacer, PageBreak
from reportlab.pdfbase import pdfmetrics
from reportlab.pdfbase.ttfonts import TTFont

parts = []
msg = ''
progName = "PDF"
progVers = "1.0"
vehID = "vehID"

def sumFile(msgStr = None, COMPLETE = 0):

    global parts, msg, progName, progVers, vehID

    pdfmetrics.registerFont(TTFont('Inconsolata', 'Inconsolata-Regular.ttf'))

    style = ParagraphStyle(
        name='Normal',
        fontName='Inconsolata',
        fontSize=8,
    )

    msgStr = msgStr.replace(' ',' ')
    msgStr = msgStr.replace('\n','<br />')
    msgStr = msgStr.replace('\t','&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;')

    if msgStr == "PageBreak":
        if msg != '':
            parts.append(Paragraph(msg, style = style))
            msg = ''
        parts.append(PageBreak())
    else:
        msg += msgStr

    if COMPLETE == 1:
        if msg != '':
            parts.append(Paragraph(msg, style = style))
            msg = ''
        genStr = "Generated using " + progName + " " + str(progVers)
        parts.append(Paragraph(genStr, style = style))
        summaryName = SimpleDocTemplate(vehID+".pdf")
        summaryName.build(parts)

if __name__ == "__main__":    
    sumFile("%9s %s\n" % ("Bobby", "Sue"))
    sumFile("{0:12}{1:7}{2:5}deg_C\tsmp {3}\n".format("20", "1000", "3.0", "535"))
    sumFile("{0} {1}\n\n".format("09/06/2016", "11:51:39"))
    # sumFile("{0} {1}\n\n".format("09/06/2016", "11:51:39"), COMPLETE=1)

A few things to note:
1. The argument to summaryName.build() should be a list.
2. The first argument to Paragraph() is a string and not a list.
3. Simply writing msgStr.replace('\n','<br />') does not modify msgStr. Hence you need to assign it.
You can refer these Mouse vs Python, Docs to learn more about ReportLab.