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pythonsubprocesspdf-generationpdflatex

Python: Insert variable in string for LaTeX pdf generation


Hello i am fairly new to Python and i would like to automate some latex pdf report generation. So i want to make a function that takes x numbers of string variables as input and insert them into a predefined latex text, such that it can be compiled as a report pdf. I really hope that someone can help me with this problem. I have tried doing like shown below, which obviously does not work:

def insertVar(site, turbine, country):
 site = str(site)
 turbine = str(turbine)
 country = str(country)

 report = r'''On %(site)s there are 300 %(turbine)s wind turbines, these lies in %(country)s'''

 with open('report.tex','w') as f:
  f.write(report)


 cmd = ['pdflatex', '-interaction', 'nonstopmode', 'report.tex']
 proc = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
 proc.communicate()

 retcode = proc.returncode
 if not retcode == 0:
    os.unlink('report.pdf')
    raise ValueError('Error {} executing command: {}'.format(retcode, ' '.join(cmd))) 

 os.unlink('report.tex')
 os.unlink('report.log')

insertVar('atsumi', 'ge', 'japan')

So i want the output of the PDF to read: "On atsumi there are 300 ge wind turbines, these lies in japan"


Solution

  • Here's a start:

    report = r'''On %(site)s there are 300 %(turbine)s wind turbines, these lies in %(country)s'''
    
    with open('report.tex','w') as f:
       f.write(report)
    

    Should be:

    report = r'''On {a}s there are 300 {b}s wind turbines, these lies in {c}s'''.format(a=site, b=turbine, c=country)
    
    with open('report.txt','w') as f:
           f.write(report)