User guide (in PDF) accessible in Trame web application

[karelvrabeckv]

Hello,
I have written a user guide (in PDF) for my web application (developed with the help of Trame). Now, I would like to add this PDF file to my application so that every user can click some button or link, and this PDF opens in a new tab of the web browser (or it downloads the file). Actually, I am interested in both ways. How can I do this in Trame? I saw some examples with plain text and images, but I was not able to reproduce them.

I am loading the user guide with the help of LocalFileManager, but then I am struggling with it. How can I make the PDF accessible to the users of my application?

import os

from trame.assets.local import LocalFileManager

asset_manager = LocalFileManager(os.path.dirname(__file__))
...
asset_manager.url("user_guide", "./user_guide.pdf")
...

Thank you very much! :)

[jourdain]

While they are better option, using the LocalFileManager you could do the following

html.A("User Manual", href= asset_manager.user_guide, download=True)

A better option would be to create a trame module to serve your pdf over http so you could do

server.enable_module(dict(serve=dict("docs", str(Path(__file__).parent.resolve())))

html.A("User Manual", href="docs/user_guide.pdf", download=True)

[jourdain]

In docker, you need to make sure the pdf gets added to the www directory. You can edit the setup directory with some add-on.

[lahwaacz]

@jourdain Hmm, relying on Dockerfile to add static files to their right place for deployment sounds like a hack. This should be part of building the application by the provided scripts.

To be more specific, we have the following Dockerfile:

FROM kitware/trame:py3.9

COPY --chown=trame-user:trame-user . /local-app
COPY --chown=trame-user:trame-user ./docker /deploy

ENV TRAME_USE_HOST=wss://domain.tld/appname
ENV TRAME_CLIENT_TYPE=vue3

RUN /opt/trame/entrypoint.sh build

COPY --chown=trame-user:trame-user ./appname/app/docs/*.pdf /deploy/server/www/docs/

The biggest problem is that the last COPY must be placed after the RUN command, otherwise entrypoint.sh notices that /deploy/server/www/ already exists/is not empty and does not copy the other static files to the right location. I don't understand why custom static files specified for "serve" with enable_module are not copied automatically.

I have also other conceptual issues with the Docker deployment (e.g. why does trame require the /deploy path in the container to be a mounted volume?) but I don't want to derail the discussion too much...

[jourdain]

I didn't tell you to edit the docker file, just to add a directory with your pdf inside .../setup/www/... that way the docker image will build and generate its /deploy/server/www with your add-on in it.

[lahwaacz]

@jourdain The pdfs are not specific to Docker deployment, so they can't be moved into the .../setup/www/... directory in the git repo - it would mean that they can't be served when running the application without Docker. Hence, there must be some copy step during the build to copy the pdfs from their in-source location to the deployment location. Please be more explicit in how you recommend to solve this.

[jourdain]

Then just use www_modules, as described in the docker doc, which is illustrated in the cookie cutter.

[jourdain]

Keep in mind that you can list your app here if that makes sense.