How to display emoji characters in PDF generated using xhtml2pdf in django?

I'm trying to convert HTML to PDF using xhtml2pdf but not able to properly render the emoji characters in the HTML they appear as black boxes. I have tried with different fonts but still the same issue.

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import time

import os
from io import BytesIO

from xhtml2pdf import pisa

source = """<html>
            <head>
              <title>Doc title</title>
              <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
              <meta charset="UTF-8">
            </head>
            <style>
                @media print {
                    @font-face {
                        font-family: Helvetica;
                        src: url("/absolute/path/to/Helvetica.ttf");
                    }
                }
                
            </style>
            <body>
                <p>🤓</p>
            </body>
        </html>"""


def convert_html_to_pdf(source):
    pdf = BytesIO()
    pisaStatus = pisa.CreatePDF(BytesIO(source), pdf, encoding='utf-8')
    return pdf


if __name__ == "__main__":
    pdf = convertHtmlToPdf(source)
    fd = open(os.path.join('/home/userX/', 'test-%s.pdf' % time.time()), "w+b")
    fd.write(pdf.getvalue())
    fd.close()

Solution

So I was able to get emoji on PDF using Symbola font as following:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import time

import os
from io import BytesIO

from xhtml2pdf import pisa

source = """<html>
            <head>
              <title>Doc title</title>
              <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
              <meta charset="UTF-8">
            </head>
            <style>
                @media print {
                    @font-face {
                        font-family: Symbola;
                        src: url("/absolute/path/to/Symbola.ttf");
                    }
                }

                body {font-family: Symbola, sans-serif !important}
            </style>
            <body>
                <p>🤓</p>
            </body>
        </html>"""


def convert_html_to_pdf(source):
    pdf = BytesIO()
    pisaStatus = pisa.CreatePDF(BytesIO(source), pdf, encoding='utf-8')
    return pdf


if __name__ == "__main__":
    pdf = convertHtmlToPdf(source)
    fd = open(os.path.join('/home/userX/', 'test-%s.pdf' % time.time()), "w+b")
    fd.write(pdf.getvalue())
    fd.close()