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 writable directory to store the generated PDFs.

3. For a single page use the Page object?

   // ** Single page **
   page = GBDev::PDF::Page.new('/path/to/template.pdf')
   page.set_text(:full_name, 'Wes Hays')
   page.save_to('/path/to/save.pdf')
   

4. For a collection of pages to be added to a single PDF use a Book object.

   book = GBDev::PDF::Book.new
   
   page1 = GBDev::PDF::Page.new('/path/to/template1.pdf')
   page1.set_text(:full_name, 'Wes Hays')
   
   page2 = GBDev::PDF::Page.new('/path/to/template2.pdf')
   page2.set_text(:full_name, 'Darren Johnson')
   
   book.add_page(page1)
   book.add_page(page2)
   
   book.save_to('/page/to/book.pdf')
   

5. Rather then setting all the fields manually a PDF can be mapped to an ActiveRecord model. The model must use the acts_as_pdf_db_mapper module. (See rdocs on acts_as_pdf_db_mapper for more options)

   class User < ActiveRecord::Base
     ...
     acts_as_pdf_db_mapper
     ...
   end
   
   user = User.first
   page = GBDev::PDF::Page.new('/path/to/template1.pdf')
   page.map_to_object(user)
   page.save_to('/path/to/save.pdf)
   

Note: You can use the shorter kernel methods PDFPage instead of GBDev::PDF::Page.new. The same goes for PDFBook instead of GBDev::PDF::Book.new.

Example:

page = PDFPage('/path/to/template.pdf')
book = PDFBook()

License

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