Guide

Turn a report into a PDF

red-ale exports reports as HTML only; write the HTML to a file with report.export, then convert it with pandoc, wkhtmltopdf or a browser's print-to-PDF.

GnuCash prints a report to a PDF file. red-ale does not: it has no PDF export and none is planned. A report is exported as one self-contained HTML page (report.export), and a PDF is made from that page by a program built for the job. The page has no script and no outside resources, so any converter reads it the same way.

Steps

  1. Export the report to a file. With the CLI, --output writes the page on your side:

    red-ale exec --book book.gnucash --output report.html report.export '{"report": "Balance Sheet"}'

    Over JSON-RPC or MCP, take the result's html and write it to a file yourself.

  2. Convert it with any of these (install them from your system's packages; red-ale does not include them):

    • pandoc, which needs a PDF engine such as WeasyPrint or a LaTeX system installed: pandoc report.html -o report.pdf --pdf-engine=weasyprint
    • wkhtmltopdf: wkhtmltopdf report.html report.pdf
    • a headless browser: chromium --headless --print-to-pdf=report.pdf report.html

  3. Or print from a browser. Open report.html and choose Print, then Save as PDF.

  4. Check the result. The tools differ in how they treat wide tables and page breaks, so look at the PDF before you send it.

An invoice for a customer is the usual case; see Print an invoice.

Example

The export that step 1 starts from: the page is in the result's html.

Example: with a copy of the reports/test-data example book open as book.gnucash, at 2024-03-15T12:00:00Z.

JSON-RPC

Request:

{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"report.export","params":{"report":"Balance Sheet","options":{"General":{"Balance Sheet Date":{"absolute":"1978-12-31"}}}}}

Response:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "result": {
    "title": " Balance Sheet 12/31/78",
    "html": "…"
  }
}

Command line

red-ale exec --book book.gnucash report.export '{"report":"Balance Sheet","options":{"General":{"Balance Sheet Date":{"absolute":"1978-12-31"}}}}'

It prints:

{
  "title": " Balance Sheet 12/31/78",
  "html": "…"
}

MCP tool call

Tool call:

{"name":"report.export","arguments":{"report":"Balance Sheet","options":{"General":{"Balance Sheet Date":{"absolute":"1978-12-31"}}}}}

Result:

{
  "structuredContent": {
    "title": " Balance Sheet 12/31/78",
    "html": "…"
  }
}