@sparticuz/pdffiller

Take an existing PDF Form and data and PDF Filler will create a new PDF with all given fields populated.

Usage no npm install needed!

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README

PDF Filler Stream

npm version Node.js CI CodeQL

This is a fork of the pdf-filler package, modified to return promises and readable streams, by piping data in/out of a spawned pdftk process instead of temporarily writing files to disk.

The goal is cleaner integration, in eg. a microservices context, where it is preferable not to write multiple temporary files to disk and where you may wish to stream the generated pdf directly to a service like AWS.

A node.js PDF form field data filler and FDF generator toolkit. This essentially is a wrapper around the PDF Toolkit library PDF ToolKit.

As of version 4.0.0, this library now targets pdftk-java, a modern fork of pdftk.

Quick start

You must first have pdftk (from pdftk-java, found here) installed correctly on your platform.

Then, install this library:

npm install @sparticuz/pdffiller --save

Note for AWS Lambda users, you may use a pdftk layer, found here

Examples

1.Fill PDF with existing FDF Data

import fillForm from '@sparticuz/pdffiller';

const sourcePDF = "test/test.pdf";

const data = {
    "last_name" : "John",
    "first_name" : "Doe",
    "date" : "Jan 1, 2013",
    "football" : "Off",
    "baseball" : "Yes",
    "basketball" : "Off",
    "hockey" : "Yes",
    "nascar" : "Off"
};

const output = await fillForm(sourcePDF, data);
// output will be instance of stream.Readable

This will take the test.pdf, fill the fields with the data values and stream a filled in, read-only PDF.

A chainable convenience method toFile is attached to the response, if you simply wish to write the stream to a file with no fuss:

fillForm(sourcePDF, data)
    .toFile('outputFile.PDF')
    .then(() => {
        // your file has been written
    }).catch((err) => {
        console.log(err);
    });

You could also stream the resulting data directly to AWS, doing something like this with an instantiated s3 client:

fillForm(sourcePDF, data)
    .then((outputStream) => {
        const Body = outputStream;
        const Bucket = 'some-bucket';
        const Key = 'myFancyNewFilledPDF';
        const ContentType = 'application/pdf';

        const uploader = new AWS.S3.ManagedUpload({
            params: {Bucket, Key, Body, ContentType},
            service: s3,
        });

        uploader.promise().then((data) => {/* do something with AWS response */})

    }).catch((err) => {
        console.log(err);
    });

Calling fillForm() with shouldFlatten = false will leave any unmapped fields still editable, as per the pdftk command specification.


const shouldFlatten = false;

fillForm(sourcePDF, data, shouldFlatten)
    .then((outputStream) {
        // etc, same as above
    })

2. Generate FDF Template from PDF

import { generateFDFTemplate } from '@sparticuz/pdffiller';

const sourcePDF = "test/test.pdf";

const FDF_data = generateFDFTemplate(sourcePDF).then((fdfData) => {
    console.log(fdfData);
}).catch((err) => {
    console.log(err);
});

This will print out this

{
    "last_name" : "",
    "first_name" : "",
    "date" : "",
    "football" : "",
    "baseball" : "",
    "basketball" : "",
    "hockey" : "",
    "nascar" : ""
}

3. Map form fields to PDF fields

import { mapForm2PDF } from '@sparticuz/pdffiller';

const conversionMap = {

    "lastName": "last_name",
    "firstName": "first_name",
    "Date": "date",
    "footballField": "football",
    "baseballField": "baseball",
    "bballField": "basketball",
    "hockeyField": "hockey",
    "nascarField": "nascar"
};

const FormFields = {
    "lastName" : "John",
    "firstName" : "Doe",
    "Date" : "Jan 1, 2013",
    "footballField" : "Off",
    "baseballField" : "Yes",
    "bballField" : "Off",
    "hockeyField" : "Yes",
    "nascarField" : "Off"
};

mapForm2PDF(data, convMap).then((mappedFields) => {
    console.log(mappedFields);
});

This will print out the object below.


{
    "last_name" : "John",
    "first_name" : "Doe",
    "date" : "Jan 1, 2013",
    "football" : "Off",
    "baseball" : "Yes",
    "basketball" : "Off",
    "hockey" : "Yes",
    "nascar" : "Off"

}

4. Convert fieldJson to FDF data

import { convFieldJson2FDF } from '@sparticuz/pdffiller';

const fieldJson = [
    {
        "title" : "last_name",
        "fieldfieldType": "Text",
        "fieldValue": "Doe"
    },
    {
        "title" : "first_name",
        "fieldfieldType": "Text",
        "fieldValue": "John"
    },
    {
        "title" : "date",
        "fieldType": "Text",
        "fieldValue": "Jan 1, 2013"
    },
    {
        "title" : "football",
        "fieldType": "Button",
        "fieldValue": false
    },
    {
        "title" : "baseball",
        "fieldType": "Button",
        "fieldValue": true
    },
    {
        "title" : "basketball",
        "fieldType": "Button"
        "fieldValue": false
    },
    {
        "title" : "hockey",
        "fieldType": "Button"
        "fieldValue": true
    },
    {
        "title" : "nascar",
        "fieldType": "Button"
        "fieldValue": false
    }
];


const FDFData = convFieldJson2FDF(data);

console.log(FDFData)

This will print out:

{
    "last_name" : "John",
    "first_name" : "Doe",
    "date" : "Jan 1, 2013",
    "football" : "Off",
    "baseball" : "Yes",
    "basketball" : "Off",
    "hockey" : "Yes",
    "nascar" : "Off"
};