How to render an NSAttributedString to a PDF

Swift version: 5.10

Paul Hudson @twostraws May 28th 2019

Attributed strings contain all the formatting they need to go straight to images, PDFs, and other visual output, although it does take a little setup to get a good PDF out.

First, create your attributed string:

let attributedString = NSAttributedString(string: "This is a test", attributes: [NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor: UIColor.red])

Next, wrap that inside a UISimpleTextPrintFormatter, which is responsible for layout out that string over as many pages as needed:

let printFormatter = UISimpleTextPrintFormatter(attributedText: attributedString)

You can then put that formatter inside a page renderer, telling it to start printing at page 0:

let renderer = UIPrintPageRenderer()
renderer.addPrintFormatter(printFormatter, startingAtPageAt: 0)

Next you need to define a few sizes: how big your paper size is, along with what margins you want.

// A4 size
let pageSize = CGSize(width: 595.2, height: 841.8)

// Use this to get US Letter size instead
// let pageSize = CGSize(width: 612, height: 792)

// create some sensible margins
let pageMargins = UIEdgeInsets(top: 72, left: 72, bottom: 72, right: 72)

// calculate the printable rect from the above two
let printableRect = CGRect(x: pageMargins.left, y: pageMargins.top, width: pageSize.width - pageMargins.left - pageMargins.right, height: pageSize.height - pageMargins.top - pageMargins.bottom)

// and here's the overall paper rectangle
let paperRect = CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: pageSize.width, height: pageSize.height)

You can now pass the paper and printable rectangles to the page renderer, like this:

renderer.setValue(NSValue(cgRect: paperRect), forKey: "paperRect")
renderer.setValue(NSValue(cgRect: printableRect), forKey: "printableRect")

The next step is to create an empty instance of NSMutableData, then ask UIKit to render into that data object:

let pdfData = NSMutableData()

UIGraphicsBeginPDFContextToData(pdfData, paperRect, nil)
renderer.prepare(forDrawingPages: NSMakeRange(0, renderer.numberOfPages))

Now all that remains is to render draw each page into the bounds of the PDF context, like this:

let bounds = UIGraphicsGetPDFContextBounds()

for i in 0  ..< renderer.numberOfPages {
    UIGraphicsBeginPDFPage()

    renderer.drawPage(at: i, in: bounds)
}

UIGraphicsEndPDFContext()

At this point your pdfData value contains the finished PDF, so you can write it wherever you want:

do {
    try pdfData.write(to: yourURL)
} catch {
    print(error.localizedDescription)
}

Available from iOS 4.2

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How to render an NSAttributedString to a PDF

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