pdfq

A lightweight library that sits between 'pdftk' and jq.

pdfq receives via stdin the output of pdftk's dump_data_fields command and outputs it as JSON.

Synopsis

If you clone this repo and cd into the examples folder, you can run these yourself:

Basic

Takes the output from dump_data_fields, pipe it into pdfq, and output json:

pdftk pdfs/SF-52.pdf dump_data_fields | pdfq

Buttons

Like the previous example, but only outputs fields where FieldType is Button.

pdftk pdfs/SF-52.pdf dump_data_fields | pdfq buttons

jq

pdfq mixes nicely with jq. In this example, jq filters for fields where FieldType is a Button.

pdftk pdfs/SF-52.pdf dump_data_fields | pdfq | jq '.[] | select(.FieldType=="Button")'

FDF

Generates FDF from JSON:

cat json/SF-52-fields.json | pdfq json_to_fdf

Fill

Combine the json_to_fdf command with pdftk to fill a form from json in two commands:

cat json/SF-52-fields.json | pdfq json_to_fdf > fdfs/SF-52-fields.fdf
pdftk pdfs/SF-52.pdf fill_form fdfs/SF-52-fields.fdf output pdfs/SF-52-filled.pdf

PDFTK wrappers

The following commands provide convenience methods on top of pdftk. To run them, you must have pdftk on your path.

Get

Gets the value of a single field in the PDF.

pdfq get <field> <pdf_path>

Example:

pdfq get EdLevel pdfs/SF-52-filled.pdf

Set

Sets the value of a single field in the PDF.

pdfq set <field> <value> <input_pdf_path> <output_pdf_path>

Example:

pdfq set EdLevel ED_LEVEL pdfs/SF-52.pdf pdfs/SF-52-filled.pdf

Installation

See latest release.

Download the appropriate binary and add it to your path.

Development

Prerequisites:

• Docker
• docker-compose
• mruby-cli

pdfq is built using mruby and the mruby-cli.

The mruby-cli is used to create the project skeleton and build toolchain.

To modify, run, and test pdfq, please refer to the mruby-cli README. However, here's a basic summary:

Modifying

Right now everything is in mrblib/pdfq.rb.

Running

$ docker-compose run compile

Then run ./mruby/build/{your build target}/bin/pdfq version.

Testing

Unit test(s)

Located in test/test_pdfq.rb.

$ docker-compose run test

Integration tests

Located in bintest/pdfq.rb.

$ docker-compose run bintest