Preparing the Source

Next step is to prepare the source – that is, the data WeasyPrint will use to render your PDF and return it to your application for processing.

The prepareSource method takes a single argument that represents your source data.

Here’s the method signature:

use WeasyPrint\Objects\Source;
use Illumintate\Support\Contracts\Renderable;

public function prepareSource(Source|Renderable|string $source): static

The $source argument may be one of the following:

• WeasyPrint\Objects\Source if you are preparing a Source instance manually. The Source::new constructor accepts a Renderable or a string.
• Illumintate\Support\Contracts\Renderable if you are passing in an instance of something that is renderable, ie it implements the render method. This might be a Laravel View, which also accepts an array of data. For more information, see the Laravel documentation on views.
• string if you are passing in an already-rendered piece of HTML, or asking WeasyPrint to fetch and render the source from an external URL.

Each of these options are detailed below:

Source Object

If you would like to use the Source object, you may instantiate it as follows:

use WeasyPrint\Objects\Source;
use WeasyPrint\Facade as WeasyPrint;

$source = Source::new('<p>WeasyPrint rocks!</p>');
$service = WeasyPrint::prepareSource($source);

Renderable

A Renderable is simply a class that implements the Renderable contract, described above.

use Illumintate\Support\Contracts\Renderable;

class MyRenderable implements Renderable
{
  public function render(): string
  {
    return 'string with rendered HTML data…';
  }
}

// …

$service = WeasyPrint::prepareSource(new MyRenderable);

String

If you prefer to pass in a string:

use WeasyPrint\Facade as WeasyPrint;

$service = WeasyPrint::prepareSource('<p>WeasyPrint rocks!</p>');