pdf_filler

The pdf_filler Rails plugin makes it easy to update existing PDFs that have form fields defined. Rather then building PDFs in Ruby using something like PDF-Writer, it is much easier to create a PDF in Acrobat, define fields, and update those fields using pdf_filler. An example would be a First/Last name field on a PDF that is possible to update.

Requirements

This plugin requires RJB (Ruby Java Bridge), so you will need to set your JAVA_HOME environment variable to point your installation of Java.

If your JAVA_HOME environment variable is not setup correctly you will get something like:

Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing pdf_filler-0.1.0.gem:
        ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/opt/local/bin/ruby extconf.rb
*** extconf.rb failed ***
Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of
necessary libraries and/or headers.  Check the mkmf.log file for more
details.  You may need configuration options.

Provided configuration options:
        --with-opt-dir
        --without-opt-dir
        --with-opt-include
        --without-opt-include=${opt-dir}/include
        --with-opt-lib
        --without-opt-lib=${opt-dir}/lib
        --with-make-prog
        --without-make-prog
        --srcdir=.
        --curdir
        --ruby=/opt/local/bin/ruby
extconf.rb:45: JAVA_HOME is not set. (RuntimeError)

Gem files will remain installed in /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rjb-1.1.7 for inspection.
Results logged to /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rjb-1.1.7/ext/gem_make.out

On my Mac I set JAVA_HOME to be “/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5/Home”.

Installing

The recommended method to enable pdf_filler in your project is adding the pdf_filler gem to your environment. Add the following code to your Rails configuration in config/environment.rb:

Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
  ...
  config.gem 'gbdev-pdf_filler', :lib => 'pdf_filler', source => 'http://gems.github.com/'
end

Run sudo rake gems:install to install the gem.

Another alternative is to install pdf_filler as a Rails plugin:

script/plugin install git://github.com/gbdev/pdf_filler.git

Usage

  1. You will need a PDF that has form fields to fill.

  2. A hash of parameters for filling the PDF form. The hash must contain all of the required options:

* :data (required) - A hash or array of hashes of fields to fill the pdf template with. Example: [{:field => 'value'}, {:field => 'value'}].
* :template (required) - The full path to the PDF form to fill.
* :dir (required) - The directory to write filled form to.
* :file_name (optional) The name of the output file to create. If not specified a random file name will be used.

  1. Example

opts = {:data => {:full_name => 'Wes Hays'},
        :template => '/path/to/templates/certificate_template.pdf'),
        :dir => '/path/to/templates/output/'),
        :file_name => 'wes_hays.pdf'}
PdfFiller(opts)

License

This plugin is released under the MIT license. Please contact weshays (github.com/weshays) or djohnson (github.com/djohnson) for any questions.