[Idea] PDF templating service
Hi all - I was hoping to call upon your community wisdom!
One of my clients want to modify existing PDF templates in bulk. Adding personalised text, images and graphs to an existing highly-designed PDF.
I was surprised that this didn't already exist as a service. Somewhere I could upload an existing template, mark areas to be customised, then render new PDF's via an API, potentially requesting print fulfilment. I would have thought that this is a relatively common use case for more traditional companies that do mailed out reporting. However, all I could find through my Googling was HTML to PDF services.
So my question:
- Have I missed something obvious, is my Google-fu not up to scratch?
- Is there a need for such a service?
Sorry, maybe I didn't get your idea right, but what is the diff between your one and this service: https://smallpdf.com/edit-pdf?
I'm assuming Chris means the following:
User uploads a PDF with template tags.
Someone sends data to an API
API sends data to the template and churns out a finalised PDF.
Chris: I've got the same idea in my long, long list of things to look at. Like you, I'm not sure of competition or demand, as it's just a thought that occurred to me. But I think it's worth looking into.
Andy
Yep, exactly.
https://pdfgeneratorapi.com/
Isn't this what you are looking for?
Thanks @sagunsh, that's pretty close to what I'm looking for. Unfortunately you have to build the PDF's from scratch using their tool. This wouldn't work for my current client at least, who get's their design team to produce beautiful PDF's. These PDF's would then be the base of the template, and from there you would add new components...etc.
Hey @pandabridge, had a little chat with a guy that is working for https://paperless.io/. It kinda reminded me of your idea. Maybe this might help you out.
Cheers, Jorim
Thanks @Jorsoi that looks like a pretty cool tool. I'll check it out when it's out of beta.
I once built this for my own project by utilizing LibreOffice templates which I then rendered into PDFs using the LibreOffice cli.
There were services that offered PDF generation APIs but I didn’t want to pay someone else for that.
Thanks @nikwen I hadn't thought to use LibreOffice. Currently I've written a prototype API in NodeJS using HummusJS (https://github.com/galkahana/HummusJS) for PDF manipulation which gives me everything I need at the moment.
Was there any particular reason you used LibreOffice to create the PDF's over other options?
I had a word document created by a non-technical person where I had to exchange some info for each user. Hence, LibreOffice’s template functionality was the easiest. It also handles line breaks, etc. very well when your {{variable}} is in the middle of a paragraph. It’s also well-supported and free.
Personally, I would stay away from Hummus as the author has made it clear that the package is no longer maintained. That looks like asking for trouble.