Manually using page with header and footer

[DmitriiKhudiakov]

For information, maybe it will help someone. The idea of ​​how to use self.page manually to navigate between pages and display header and footer without misleading fonts is to first display all content, then display footer and header by defining a custom method like in the example.

from fpdf import FPDF, XPos, YPos


class TestFPDF(FPDF):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__(unit="pt")
        # Set margins
        mt, mr, mb, ml = 50, 30, 50, 30
        self.set_auto_page_break(auto=True, margin=mb)
        self.font_family = "Times"
        self.set_font(family=self.font_family, style='', size=12)
        self.set_margins(left=ml, top=mt, right=mr)

    def _multi_cell(self, *args, hold_start_page: bool = False, **kwargs):
        start_page = self.page
        self.multi_cell(*args, **kwargs)
        if hold_start_page and self.page != start_page:
            self.page = start_page

    def _draw_header(self):
        self.will_page_break = lambda *args, **kwargs: False
        self.set_margins(top=0, left=0, right=0)
        for page in range(1, self.page + 1):
            self.page = page
            self.current_font_is_set_on_page = False
            # Draw Header on the page
            self.set_font("helvetica", style="B", size=15)
            self.set_xy(0, 20)
            self.cell(w=0, text="Header Title", align="C", border=1)

    def _draw_footer(self):
        self.will_page_break =  lambda *args, **kwargs: False
        self.set_margins(top=0, left=0, right=0)
        for page in range(1, self.page + 1):
            self.page = page
            self.current_font_is_set_on_page = False
            # Draw Footer on the page
            self.set_font("helvetica", style="I", size=8)
            self.set_xy(0, self.h_pt - 25)
            self.cell(w=0, text=f"Page {self.page_no()}/{{nb}}", align="C", border=1)


    def draw(self):
        self.add_page()
        self.set_y(700)
        ###########################################

        start_y = self.get_y()
        self._multi_cell(
            250,
            None,
            "".join(["LEFT " for _ in range(100)]),
            border=1,
            align="L",
            new_x=XPos.RIGHT,
            new_y=YPos.TOP,
            hold_start_page=True
        )
        self.set_xy(self.get_x(), start_y)
        self._multi_cell(
            250,
            None,
            "".join(["RIGHT " for _ in range(100)]),
            border=1,
            align="L"
        )

        ###########################################
        self._draw_header()
        self._draw_footer()
        return self.output()


if __name__ == "__main__":
    with open("test.pdf", "wb") as file:
        file.write(TestFPDF().draw())

[Lucas-C]

Thank you for sharing your recipe @DmitriiKhudiakov

Have you considered using the builtin header() & footer() methods? Have you found some limitations with them?

[DmitriiKhudiakov]

If I use the built-in methods for footer and header, it will cause problems when navigating back to page (for example, I will have a flow like this (as I understand it): draw content on first page, draw footer with F1 font on first page, automatically remember the last used font on first page, automatically go to second page, continue drawing content on second page, manually go to first page, set F2 font for drawn content, draw content on first page (and this content is drawn with F1 font instead of F2). The library takes the font from the footer because it was the last element drawn on the first page, instead of taking my F2 font that I manually set for drawing. That's why I use self.current_font_is_set_on_page = False. As I understand it, using standard footer method also includes other things in the background, and I guess the best solution is to first draw all the content and then render all footers with my own method. In this case I can be sure that the using of standard footer() method will not affect the content of my page, because footer will be rendered after all the page content is ready + i avoid of executing logic in _render_footer method i dont need in my approach.