PDFTk

Server-side Meteor wrapper for PDFtk, the PDF toolkit, a tool for manipulating PDF documents.

From the pdftk man page:

If PDF is electronic paper, then pdftk is an electronic stapler-remover, hole-punch, binder, secret-decoder-ring, and X-Ray-glasses. Pdftk is a simple tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents. Keep one in the top drawer of your desktop and use it to:

• Merge PDF Documents or Collate PDF Page Scans
• Split PDF Pages into a New Document
• Rotate PDF Documents or Pages
• Decrypt Input as Necessary (Password Required)
• Encrypt Output as Desired
• Fill PDF Forms with X/FDF Data and/or Flatten Forms
• Generate FDF Data Stencils from PDF Forms
• Apply a Background Watermark or a Foreground Stamp
• Report PDF Metrics such as Metadata and Bookmarks
• Update PDF Metadata
• Attach Files to PDF Pages or the PDF Document
• Unpack PDF Attachments
• Burst a PDF Document into Single Pages
• Uncompress and Re-Compress Page Streams
• Repair Corrupted PDF (Where Possible)

Requirements

You need to have PDFTK installed on the system. Downloads for all operating systems are available at https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-server/. For Linux, you can also run sudo apt-get install pdftk (make sure you get the latest version).

Quick Start

Add the package with meteor add pdftk:pdftk. In your server code, you can run wrappers like this:

PDFTK.stamp('/path/to/in.pdf', '/path/to/stamp.pdf', '/path/to/pdfstamp/out.pdf', function (error, stdout, stderr) {
  if (error) console.log('Error:', error);
  else {
    // success
  }
})

Note that you need to pass absolute paths to the files because the current directory when running meteor is going to be .meteor/local/build/programs/server/ when debugging, and something similar in production.

Command wrappers

Consult the man page for command details.

• cat(pdf, start, end, callback) (aliased: pages)
• stamp(pdf, stamp, output, callback)
• multistamp(pdf, stamp, output, callback)
• fillForm(pdf, xfdf, output, callback)

Pull requests are welcome for more wrappers. If you need to execute a custom command, or one that's not wrapped, run:

• PDFTK.execute(args, callback)

Documentation

More information about PDFTK:

• Wikipedia
• man page
• CLI examples

Contributing

Contributors are very welcome. Some guidelines below:

• Questions: It's okay to ask a question on Github Issues if you're having trouble since the volume is manageable. Just prefix your Github Issue with 'Question: ' so we can differentiate easily. Also, please make sure you've read through PDFTk documentation and tried a few things before asking. Also, please provide a cloneable Github repository if the issue is complex. For more complex questions sometimes it's hard to get all of the context required to solve a problem by just looking at text.

• New Features: If you'd like to work on a feature for the PDFTk wrapper, start by creating a 'Feature Design: Title' issue. This will let people bat it around a bit before you send a full blown pull request. Also, you can create an issue to discuss a design even if you won't be working on it.

• Answer Questions!: If you can help another user please do!

TODO

1. Make sync version
2. Wrap more commands
3. Document the Buffer return value - anything we can actually do with it, vs. the callback?

Contributors

• Pascal Richier, @pascoual
• Aaron Adams, @aadamsx
• Dan Dascalescu, @dandv

License

MIT