macos - How to create a PDF in Swift with Cocoa (Mac)

Question

Xcode 7.3.2, Swift 2, Cocoa (Mac).

My app involves the user entering in some text, which can be exported to a PDF.

In the iOS version of my app, I can create the PDF relatively easily with the CoreText framework:

let html = "<font face='Futura' color="SlateGray"><h2>(title)</h2></font><font face="Avenir" color="SlateGray"><h4>(string)</h4></font>"

    let fmt = UIMarkupTextPrintFormatter(markupText: html)

    // 2. Assign print formatter to UIPrintPageRenderer

    let render = UIPrintPageRenderer()
    render.addPrintFormatter(fmt, startingAtPageAt: 0)

    // 3. Assign paperRect and printableRect

    let page = CGRect(x: 10, y: 10, width: 595.2, height: 841.8) // A4, 72 dpi, margin of 10 from top and left.
    let printable = page.insetBy(dx: 0, dy: 0)

    render.setValue(NSValue(cgRect: page), forKey: "paperRect")
    render.setValue(NSValue(cgRect: printable), forKey: "printableRect")

    // 4. Create PDF context and draw

    let pdfData = NSMutableData()
    UIGraphicsBeginPDFContextToData(pdfData, CGRect.zero, nil)

    for i in 1...render.numberOfPages {

        UIGraphicsBeginPDFPage();
        let bounds = UIGraphicsGetPDFContextBounds()
        render.drawPage(at: i - 1, in: bounds)
    }

    UIGraphicsEndPDFContext();

    // 5. Save PDF file

    path = "(NSTemporaryDirectory())(title).pdf"
    pdfData.write(toFile: path, atomically: true)

However, UIMarkupTextPrintFormatter, UIPrintPageRenderer, UIGraphicsBeginPDFContextToData, and UIGraphicsEndPDFContext all do not exist on OS X. How can I do the exact same thing as I am doing with this iOS code (create a basic PDF from some HTML and write it to a certain file path as a paginated PDF) with Mac and Cocoa?

EDIT: The answer to this question is here: Create a paginated PDF—Mac OS X.

Answer 1

Here is a function that will generate a PDF from pure HTML.

func makePDF(markup: String) {
    let directoryURL = NSFileManager.defaultManager().URLsForDirectory(.DocumentDirectory, inDomains: .UserDomainMask)[0]
    let printOpts: [NSPrintInfo.AttributeKey: Any] = [NSPrintInfo.AttributeKey.jobDisposition: NSPrintInfo.JobDisposition.save, NSPrintInfo.AttributeKey.jobSavingURL: directoryURL]
    let printInfo = NSPrintInfo(dictionary: printOpts)
    printInfo.horizontalPagination = NSPrintingPaginationMode.AutoPagination
    printInfo.verticalPagination = NSPrintingPaginationMode.AutoPagination
    printInfo.topMargin = 20.0
    printInfo.leftMargin = 20.0
    printInfo.rightMargin = 20.0
    printInfo.bottomMargin = 20.0

    let view = NSView(frame: NSRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 570, height: 740))

    if let htmlData = markup.dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding) {
        if let attrStr = NSAttributedString(HTML: htmlData, options: [NSDocumentTypeDocumentAttribute: NSHTMLTextDocumentType], documentAttributes: nil) {
            let frameRect = NSRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 570, height: 740)
            let textField = NSTextField(frame: frameRect)
            textField.attributedStringValue = attrStr
            view.addSubview(textField)

            let printOperation = NSPrintOperation(view: view, printInfo: printInfo)
            printOperation.showsPrintPanel = false
            printOperation.showsProgressPanel = false
            printOperation.run()
        }
    }
}

What is happening:

1. Put the HTML into a NSAttributedString.
2. Render the NSAttributedString to a NSTextField.
3. Render the NSTextField to a NSView.
4. Create a NSPrintOperation with that NSView.
5. Set the printing parameters to save as a PDF.
6. Run the print operation (which actually opens a dialog to save the PDF)
7. Everyone is happy.

This is not a perfect solution. Note the hard coded integer values.