Fill PDF Form

Fill a PDF form with text data supplied in JSON file. Of course, the PDF document does not need to be a form but that was the original premise. It can be any PDF document for which you want to place text data.

The data is written to the PDF document supplied. Multi-page PDF documents are supported. The meta data requires the page number to be supplied.

Dependencies

On Ubuntu 16.04 install libjpeg-dev:

sudo apt install libjpeg-dev

Installation

Clone the repository. Create a Python virtual environment. This program may work with Python 2:

cd pdf-form-filler
mkvirtualenv --python=/usr/bin/python3 pdf-form-filler
setvirtualenvproject
pip install -r requirements/install.txt

Given your base PDF document and JSON data, you can invoke like this:

python filler.py --base-form=myform.pdf --form-data=form_data.json \
    --extra-data=extra_data.json --output-file=filled_form.pdf \
    --preview

The optional --extra-data argument solves the problem of completing many forms containing common information with personalized differences. The data common to all forms may be inserted into the extra-data file while the individualized per-form data is in the form-data file.

If the optional --preview argument present, the text background will be colored. This is helpful for positioning.

Structure of JSON Data

The JSON data is an array of objects, each representing a field. Each JSON object in the array contains all the data needed to position the field. Not all attributes are meaningful within the type context. For instance, font attributes are ignored for image field types:

[
    {
        "comment": "Text type",
        "page": 1,
        "x": 337,
        "y": 711,
        "type": "text",
        "width": 10,
        "height": 10,
        "align_horizontal": "center",
        "align_vertical": "center",
        "font_face": "Courier",
        "font_size": 14,
        "font_color": "0000FF",
        "rotation": 90,
        "data": "This Thing"
    },
    {
        "comment": "Image type",
        "page": 2,
        "x": 337,
        "y": 611,
        "type": "image",
        "width": 10,
        "height": 10,
        "align_horizontal": "center",
        "align_vertical": "center",
        "font_face": "Courier",
        "font_size": 14,
        "font_color": "000000",
        "rotation": 90,
        "data": "/path/to/image.png"
    }
    {
        "comment": "Outline type",
        "page": 3,
        "x": 50,
        "y": 30,
        "type": "outline",
        "width": 235,
        "height": 408,
        "line_width": 3,
        "align_horizontal": "center",
        "align_vertical": "center",
        "font_face": "Courier",
        "font_size": 14,
        "font_color": "000000",
        "rotation": 0,
        "data": ""
    },
    {
        "comment": "Line type",
        "page": 4,
        "x": 50,
        "y": 30,
        "type": "line",
        "width": 235,
        "height": 0,
        "line_width": 3,
        "align_horizontal": "center",
        "align_vertical": "center",
        "font_face": "",
        "font_size": 0,
        "font_color": "000000",
        "rotation": 0,
        "data": ""
    }
]

There are four types of fields: text, image, outline, and line fields. If the type attribute is text, the value of the data attribute is handled as text data. If the type attribute is image, the value of the data attribute is handled as the path to an image. If the type attribute is outline or line, the data attribute is ignored.

There are some special considerations for line type fields. Set width or height to zero as needed or the drawn line will be diagonal. Because of this, the preview box will not be visible.

TODO: Various JSON attributes are ignored for different values of type. Required attributes for each type should be listed.

Running Tests

Install test dependencies:

$ pip install -r requirements/test.txt

Run PyTest:

$ pytest

Coverage report will be written to htmlcov/index.html.

References

1. ReportLab User Guide (PDF)