pdffiller-stream

PDF Filler Stream
======


> 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.

Quick start
-----------

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

Then, install this library:

``bash
npm install pdffiller-stream --save
`

Note for MacOS / OSX Developers - the main pdftk package for OSX is currently broken as of OS 10.11, but PDFLabs released an alternative build that should work normally on the platform: https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg

Examples

#### 1.Fill PDF with existing FDF Data

``javascript
import pdfFiller from 'pdffiller-stream';

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"
};

pdfFiller.fillForm( sourcePDF, data)
.then((outputStream) => {
// use the outputStream here;
// will be instance of stream.Readable
}).catch((err) => {
console.log(err);
});

``

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

You can use the returned stream to write a file to disk using a standard library like fs.createWriteStream(desination), or send it directly to a service like AWS (which accepts streams as input).

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

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

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

`javascript

const shouldFlatten = false;

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


#### 2. Generate FDF Template from PDF

``javascript
import pdfFiller from 'pdffiller-stream';

const sourcePDF = "test/test.pdf";

// Override the default field name regex. Default: /FieldName: ([^\n]*)/
const nameRegex = null;

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

``

This will print out this
`json
{
"last_name" : "",
"first_name" : "",
"date" : "",
"football" : "",
"baseball" : "",
"basketball" : "",
"hockey" : "",
"nascar" : ""
}
`

#### 3. Map form fields to PDF fields
``javascript
import pdfFiller from 'pdffiller-stream';

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"
};

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

This will print out the object below.
`json

{
"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
``javascript
import pdfFiller from 'pdffiller-stream';

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 = pdfFiller.convFieldJson2FDF(data);

console.log(FDFData)
``

This will print out:

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