Fill form via JSON

This command fills form fields with data via JSON.

Export your form into JSON using pdfcpu form export.
Edit value (or values where appropriate) for all form fields you want to fill in the exported file.
In addition to modifying value(s) you may change the locked status for fields.
Remove all fields which shall remain untouched.
Run pdfcpu form fill. This will process the attributes value and locked only.

Note

Local images in JSON form data and JSON/CSV multifill data follow the same local image access policy as create . See that guide for CLI/API defaults, configuration examples, path restrictions and migration instructions.

pdfcpu generates all appearance streams for form fields, but if you do have form field display issues then the following configuration option may help: needAppearances: true

When filling radio button groups you may provide either the displayed choice or its array index. Export the form first if you need to see the exact choices. Choice names containing spaces or # characters are supported, including in forms created with older pdfcpu releases.

When pdfcpu generates field appearances, it uses the font encoding stored in the form. If the form does not define a usable glyph for a value, filling reports an error instead of silently displaying the wrong character.

Have a look at some examples .

Usage

pdfcpu form fill inFile inFileJSON [ outFile ] [flags]

Common Flags

Arguments

name	description	required
inFile	PDF input file containing form, use `-` to read from stdin	yes
inFileJSON	JSON input file with form data	yes
outFile	PDF output file, use `-` to write to stdout	no

Examples

Use an exported JSON file to fill firstName and dob and make dob read-only:

Field identification may be processed via “id” or “name”.

We edit the JSON file:

{
	"header": {
		"source": "english.pdf",
		"version": "pdfcpu v0.4.1",
		"creation": "2023-04-04 20:22:17 CET",
		"producer": "pdfcpu v0.4.1"
	},
	"forms": [
		{
			"textfield": [
				{
					"name": "firstName",
					"value": "Horst",
					"locked": false
				}
			],
			"datefield": [
				{
					"name": "dob",
					"value": "31.12.1999",
					"locked": true
				}
			]
		}
	]
}

We trigger (a dry run for) form filling and write the filled form to tmp.pdf:

$ pdfcpu form fill english.pdf english.json tmp.pdf

We check the result by exporting the form out of tmp.pdf:

$ pdfcpu form export tmp.pdf tmp.json
writing tmp.json...

We inspect tmp.json and are satisfied with the result.
We open tmp.pdf in Adobe Reader and are satisfied with the result.
We fill the original form:

$ pdfcpu form fill english.pdf english.json

Fill a streamed form with a local JSON data file:

$ aws s3 cp s3://acme-forms/application.pdf - \
   | pdfcpu form fill - application.json - \
   | aws s3 cp - s3://acme-forms/application-filled.pdf