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API Reference

weasyprint

This page is for WeasyPrint . See changelog </changelog> for older versions.

API Stability

Everything described here is considered “public”: this is what you can rely on. We will try to maintain backward-compatibility, and we really often do, but there is no hard promise.

Anything else should not be used outside of WeasyPrint itself. We reserve the right to change it or remove it at any point. Use it at your own risk, or have dependency to a specific WeasyPrint version.

Versioning

WeasyPrint provides frequent major releases, and minor releases with only bug fixes. Versioning is close to what many browsers do, including Firefox and Chrome: big major numbers, small minor numbers.

Even if each version does not break the API, each version does break the way documents are rendered, which is what really matters at the end. Providing minor versions would give the illusion that developers can just update WeasyPrint without checking that everything works.

Unfortunately, we have the same problem as the other browsers: when a new version is released, most of the user's websites are rendered exactly the same, but a small part is not. And the only ways to know that, for web developers, are to read the changelog and to check that their pages are correctly rendered.

More about this choice can be found in issue #900.

Command-line API

weasyprint.__main__.main(argv=sys.argv)

Python API

HTML(input, **kwargs)

CSS(input, **kwargs)

Attachment(input, **kwargs)

default_url_fetcher

weasyprint.document

Document

DocumentMetadata()

Page()

weasyprint.text.fonts

FontConfiguration()

weasyprint.css.counters

CounterStyle()

Supported Features

URLs

WeasyPrint can read normal files, HTTP, FTP and data URIs. It will follow HTTP redirects but more advanced features like cookies and authentication are currently not supported, although a custom URL fetcher <URL Fetchers> can help.

HTML

Supported HTML Tags

Many HTML elements are implemented in CSS through the HTML5 User-Agent stylesheet.

Some elements need special treatment:

  • The <base> element, if present, determines the base for relative URLs.
  • CSS stylesheets can be embedded in <style> elements or linked by <link rel=stylesheet> elements.
  • <img>, <embed> or <object> elements accept images either in raster formats supported by Pillow (including PNG, JPEG, GIF, ...) or in SVG. SVG images are not rasterized but rendered as vectors in the PDF output.

HTML presentational hints are not supported by default, but most of them can be supported:

  • by using the --presentational-hints CLI parameter, or
  • by setting the presentational_hints parameter of the HTML.render or HTML.write_* methods to True.

Presentational hints include a wide array of attributes that direct styling in HTML, including font color and size, list attributes like type and start, various table alignment attributes, and others. If the document generated by WeasyPrint is missing some of the features you expect from the HTML, try to enable this option.

Stylesheet Origins

HTML documents are rendered with stylesheets from three origins:

  • The HTML5 user agent stylesheet (defines the default appearance of HTML elements);
  • Author stylesheets embedded in the document in <style> elements or linked by <link rel=stylesheet> elements;
  • User stylesheets provided in the API.

Keep in mind that user stylesheets have a lower priority than author stylesheets in the cascade, unless you use !important in declarations to raise their priority.

PDF

In addition to text, raster and vector graphics, WeasyPrint’s PDF files can contain hyperlinks, bookmarks and attachments.

Hyperlinks will be clickable in PDF viewers that support them. They can be either internal, to another part of the same document (eg. <a href="#pdf">) or external, to an URL. External links are resolved to absolute URLs: <a href="/samples/"> on the WeasyPrint website would always point to https://weasyprint.org/samples/ in PDF files.

PDF bookmarks are also called outlines and are generally shown in a sidebar. Clicking on an entry scrolls the matching part of the document into view. By default all <h1> to <h6> titles generate bookmarks, but this can be controlled with PDF bookmarks.)

Attachments are related files, embedded in the PDF itself. They can be specified through <link rel=attachment> elements to add resources globally or through regular links with <a rel=attachment> to attach a resource that can be saved by clicking on said link. The title attribute can be used as description of the attachment.

The generation of PDF/A documents (A-1b, A-2b, A-3b and A-4b) is supported. However, the generated documents are not guaranteed to be valid, and users have the responsibility to check that they follow the rules listed by the related specifications. The major rules to follow are to include a PDF identifier, to check the PDF version, and to avoid anti-aliasing for images using image-rendering: crisp-edges.

The generation of PDF/UA documents (UA-1) is supported. However, the generated documents are not guaranteed to be valid, and users have the responsibility to check that they follow the rules listed by the related specifications. The main constraint is to use a correct HTML structure to avoid inconsistencies in the PDF structure.

Fonts

WeasyPrint can use any font that Pango can find installed on the system. Fonts are automatically embedded in PDF files.

Pango always uses fontconfig to access fonts, even on Windows and macOS. You can list the available fonts thanks to the fc-list command, and know which font is matched by a given pattern thanks to fc-match. Copying a font file into the ~/.local/share/fonts directory is generally enough to install a new font. WeasyPrint should support the major font formats handled by Harfbuzz.

CSS

WeasyPrint supports many of the CSS specifications written by the W3C. You will find in this chapter a comprehensive list of the specifications or drafts with at least one feature implemented in WeasyPrint.

The results of some of the test suites provided by the W3C are also available at test.weasyprint.org. This website uses a tool called WeasySuite that can be useful if you want to implement new features in WeasyPrint.

CSS Level 2 Revision 1

The CSS Level 2 Revision 1 specification, best known as CSS 2.1, is pretty well supported by WeasyPrint. Since version 0.11, it passes the famous Acid2 Test.

The CSS 2.1 features listed here are not supported:

To the best of our knowledge, everything else that applies to the print media is supported. Please report a bug if you find this list incomplete.

Selectors Level 3 / 4

With the exceptions noted here, all Selectors Level 3 are supported.

PDF is generally not interactive. The :hover, :active, :focus, :target and :visited pseudo-classes are accepted as valid but never match anything.

Everything in Selectors Level 4 is supported, except:

  • :dir,
  • input pseudo-classes (:valid, :invalid…),
  • column selector (||, :nth-col(), :nth-last-col()).

CSS Text Module Level 3 / 4

The CSS Text Module Level 3 and CSS Text Module Level 4 are working drafts defining "properties for text manipulation" and covering "line breaking, justification and alignment, white space handling, and text transformation".

Among their features, some are already included in CSS 2.1, sometimes with missing or different values (text-indent, text-align, letter-spacing, word-spacing, text-transform, white-space).

New properties defined in Level 3 are supported:

  • the overflow-wrap property replacing word-wrap;
  • the break-all value of the word-break property (see #1153);
  • the full-width value of the text-transform property; and
  • the start, end and justify-all values of the text-align property;
  • the text-align-last and text-justify properties; and
  • the tab-size property.

Properties controlling hyphenation are supported by WeasyPrint:

  • hyphens,
  • hyphenate-character,
  • hyphenate-limit-chars, and
  • hyphenate-limit-zone.

To get automatic hyphenation, you to set it to auto and have the lang HTML attribute set to one of the languages supported by Pyphen.

<!doctype html>
<html lang=en>
<style>
  html { hyphens: auto }
</style>
…

Automatic hyphenation can be disabled again with the manual value:

html { hyphens: auto }
a[href]::after { content: ' [' attr(href) ']'; hyphens: manual }

The other features provided by CSS Text Module Level 3 are not supported:

  • the line-break property;
  • the match-parent value of the text-align property;
  • the text-indent and hanging-punctuation properties.

The other features provided by CSS Text Module Level 4 are not supported:

  • the text-space-collapse and text-space-trim properties;
  • the text-wrap, wrap-before, wrap-after and wrap-inside properties;
  • the text-align property with an alignment character;
  • the pre-wrap-auto value of the white-space property; and
  • the text-spacing property.

CSS Fonts Module Level 3 / 4

The CSS Fonts Module Level 3 is a candidate recommendation describing "how font properties are specified and how font resources are loaded dynamically".

WeasyPrint supports the font-size, font-stretch, font-style and font-weight properties, coming from CSS 2.1.

WeasyPrint also supports the following font features added in Level 3: - font-kerning, - font-variant-ligatures, - font-variant-position, - font-variant-caps, - font-variant-numeric, - font-variant-east-asian, - font-feature-settings, and - font-language-override.

font-family is supported. The string is given to Pango that tries to find a matching font in a way different from what is defined in the recommendation, but that should not be a problem for common use.

The shorthand font and font-variant properties are supported.

WeasyPrint supports the @font-face rule.

WeasyPrint does not support the @font-feature-values rule and the values of font-variant-alternates other than normal and historical-forms.

The font-variant-caps property is supported but needs the small-caps variant of the font to be installed. WeasyPrint does not simulate missing small-caps fonts.

From CSS Fonts Module Level 4 we only support the font-variation-settings property enabling specific font variations.

CSS Paged Media Module Level 3

The CSS Paged Media Module Level 3 is a working draft including features for paged media "describing how:

  • page breaks are created and avoided;
  • the page properties such as size, orientation, margins, border, and padding are specified;
  • headers and footers are established within the page margins;
  • content such as page counters are placed in the headers and footers; and
  • orphans and widows can be controlled."

All the features of this draft are available, including:

  • the @page rule and the :left, :right, :first and :blank selectors;
  • the page margin boxes;
  • the page-based counters (with known limitations #93);
  • the page size, bleed and marks properties;
  • the named pages.

CSS Generated Content for Paged Media Module

The CSS Generated Content for Paged Media Module (GCPM) is a working draft defining "new properties and values, so that authors may bring new techniques (running headers and footers, footnotes, page selection) to paged media".

Page selectors are supported by WeasyPrint. You can select pages according to their position in the document:

@page :nth(3) { background: red } /* Third page */
@page :nth(2n+1) { background: green } /* Odd pages */

You can also use running elements to put HTML boxes into the page margins (but the start parameter of element() is not supported).

Footnotes are supported. You can put a box in the footnote area using the float: footnote property. Footnote markers and footnote calls can be defined using the ::footnote-marker and ::footnote-call pseudo-elements. You can also change the way footnotes are displayed using the footnote-display property (compact is not supported), and influence over the rendering of difficult pages with footnote-policy.

Page groups (:nth(X of pagename) pseudo-class) are not supported.

CSS Generated Content Module Level 3

The CSS Generated Content Module Level 3 is a working draft helping "authors [who] sometimes want user agents to render content that does not come from the document tree. One familiar example of this is numbered headings […]. Similarly, authors may want the user agent to insert the word "Figure" before the caption of a figure […], or replacing elements with images or other multimedia content."

Named strings are supported by WeasyPrint. You can define strings related to the first or last element of a type present on a page, and display these strings in page borders. This feature is really useful to add the title of the current chapter at the top of the pages of a book for example.

The named strings can embed static strings, counters, cross-references, tag contents and tag attributes.

@top-center { content: string(chapter) }
h2 { string-set: chapter "Current chapter: " content() }

Cross-references retrieve counter or content values from targets (anchors or identifiers) in the current document:

a::after { content: ", on page " target-counter(attr(href), page) }
a::after { content: ", see " target-text(attr(href)) }

In particular, target-counter() and target-text() are useful when it comes to tables of contents (see an example).

You can also control PDF bookmarks with WeasyPrint. Using the bookmark-level, bookmark-label and bookmark-state properties, you can add bookmarks that will be available in your PDF reader.

Bookmarks have already been added in the WeasyPrint's user agent stylesheet, so your generated documents will automatically have bookmarks on headers (from <h1> to <h6>). But for example, if you have only one top-level <h1> and do not wish to include it in the bookmarks, add this in your stylesheet:

h1 { bookmark-level: none }

The other features of this module are not implemented:

  • quotes (content: *-quote);
  • leaders (content: leader()).

CSS Color Module Level 3

The CSS Color Module Level 3 is a recommendation defining "CSS properties which allow authors to specify the foreground color and opacity of an element". Its main goal is to specify how colors are defined, including color keywords and the #rgb, #rrggbb, rgb(), rgba(), hsl(), hsla() syntaxes. Opacity and alpha compositing are also defined in this document.

This recommendation is fully implemented in WeasyPrint, except the deprecated System Colors.

CSS Transforms Module Level 1

The CSS Transforms Module Level 1 working draft "describes a coordinate system within each element is positioned. This coordinate space can be modified with the transform property. Using transform, elements can be translated, rotated and scaled in two or three dimensional space."

WeasyPrint supports the transform and transform-origin properties, and all the 2D transformations (matrix, rotate, translate, translateX, translateY, scale, scaleX, scaleY, skew, skewX, skewY).

WeasyPrint does not support the transform-style, perspective, perspective-origin and backface-visibility properties, and all the 3D transformations (matrix3d, rotate3d, rotateX, rotateY, rotateZ, translate3d, translateZ, scale3d, scaleZ).

CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3

The CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3 is a candidate recommendation defining properties dealing "with the decoration of the border area and with the background of the content, padding and border areas".

The border part of this module is supported, as it is already included in the the CSS 2.1 specification.

WeasyPrint supports the background part of this module (allowing multiple background layers per box), including the background, background-color, background-image, background-repeat, background-attachment, background-position, background-clip, background-origin and background-size properties.

WeasyPrint also supports the rounded corners part of this module, including the border-radius property.

WeasyPrint does not support the border images part of this module, including the border-image, border-image-source, border-image-slice, border-image-width, border-image-outset and border-image-repeat properties.

WeasyPrint does not support the box shadow part of this module, including the box-shadow property. This feature has been implemented in a git branch that is not released, as it relies on raster implementation of shadows.

CSS Image Values and Replaced Content Module Level 3 / 4

The Image Values and Replaced Content Module Level 3 is a candidate recommendation introducing "additional ways of representing 2D images, for example as a list of URIs denoting fallbacks, or as a gradient", defining "several properties for manipulating raster images and for sizing or positioning replaced elements" and "generic sizing algorithm for replaced elements".

The Image Values and Replaced Content Module Level 4 is a working draft on the same subject.

The linear-gradient(), radial-gradient() and repeating-radial-gradient() properties are supported as background images.

The the url() notation is supported, but the image() notation is not supported for background images.

The object-fit and object-position properties are supported.

The from-image and snap values of the image-resolution property are not supported, but the resolution value is supported.

The image-rendering and image-orientation properties are supported.

CSS Box Sizing Module Level 3

The CSS Box Sizing Module Level 3 is a candidate recommendation extending "the CSS sizing properties with keywords that represent content-based 'intrinsic' sizes and context-based 'extrinsic' sizes."

The new property defined in this document is implemented in WeasyPrint: box-sizing.

The min-content, max-content and fit-content() sizing values are not supported.

CSS Overflow Module Level 3

The CSS Overflow Module Level 3 is a working draft containing "the features of CSS relating to scrollable overflow handling in visual media."

The overflow property is supported, as defined in CSS2. overflow-x, overflow-y, overflow-clip-margin, overflow-inline and overflow-block are not supported.

The text-overflow, block-ellipsis, line-clamp, max-lines and continue properties are supported.

CSS Values and Units Module Level 3

The CSS Values and Units Module Level 3 defines various units and keywords used in "value definition field of each CSS property".

The initial and inherit CSS-wide keywords are supported, but the unset keyword is not supported.

Quoted strings, URLs and numeric data types are supported.

Font-related lengths (em, ex, ch, rem), absolute lengths (cm, mm, q, in, pt, pc, px), angles (rad, grad, turn, deg), resolutions (dpi, dpcm, dppx) are supported.

The attr() functional notation is allowed in the content and string-set properties.

Viewport-percentage lengths (vw, vh, vmin, vmax) are not supported.

CSS Multi-column Layout Module

The CSS Multi-column Layout Module "describes multi-column layouts in CSS, a style sheet language for the web. Using functionality described in the specification, content can be flowed into multiple columns with a gap and a rule between them."

Simple multi-column layouts are supported in WeasyPrint. Features such as constrained height, spanning columns or column breaks are not supported. Pagination and overflow are not seriously tested.

The column-width and column-count properties, and the columns shorthand property are supported.

The column-gap, column-rule-color, column-rule-style and column-rule-width properties, and the column-rule shorthand property are supported.

The break-before, break-after and break-inside properties are supported.

The column-span property is supported for direct children of columns.

The column-fill property is supported, with a column balancing algorithm that should be efficient with simple cases.

CSS Fragmentation Module Level 3 / 4

The CSS Fragmentation Module Level 3 "describes the fragmentation model that partitions a flow into pages, columns, or regions. It builds on the Page model module and introduces and defines the fragmentation model. It adds functionality for pagination, breaking variable fragment size and orientation, widows and orphans."

The CSS Fragmentation Module Level 4 is a working draft on the same subject.

The break-before, break-after and break-inside properties are supported for pages, but not for columns and regions. page-break-* aliases as defined in CSS2 are supported too.

The orphans and widows properties are supported.

The box-decoration-break property is supported, but backgrounds are always repeated and not extended through the whole box as it should be with 'slice' value.

The margin-break property is supported.

CSS Custom Properties for Cascading Variables Module Level 1

The CSS Custom Properties for Cascading Variables Module Level 1 "introduces cascading variables as a new primitive value type that is accepted by all CSS properties, and custom properties for defining them."

The custom properties are supported. The var() notation is only supported in single-value properties.

CSS Text Decoration Module Level 3

The CSS Text Decoration Module Level 3 "contains the features of CSS relating to text decoration, such as underlines, text shadows, and emphasis marks."

The text-decoration-line, text-decoration-style and text-decoration-color properties are supported, except from the wavy value of text-decoration-style. The text-decoration shorthand is also supported.

The other properties (text-underline-position, text-emphasis-*, text-shadow) are not supported.

CSS Flexible Box Layout Module Level 1

The CSS Flexible Box Layout Module Level 1 "describes a CSS box model optimized for user interface design", also known as "flexbox".

This module works for simple use cases but is not deeply tested.

All the flex-*, align-*, justify-* and order properties are supported. The flex and flex-flow shorthands are supported too.