Multifill form via JSON or CSV

This command fills form fields with data via JSON or CSV.

The workflow is similar to simple form filling except here we import a collection of form instances and generate one PDF for each.

Optionally this command can merge the output PDFs together.

Have a look at some examples.

Usage

pdfcpu form multifill inFile inFileData outDir [ outFile ] [flags]

Flags

name	description	required	values
m(ode)	output mode (defaults to single)	no	single, merge

Common Flags

Arguments

name	description	required
inFile	PDF input file containing form, use `-` to read from stdin	yes
inFileData	JSON/CSV input file with form data	yes
outDir	output directory	yes
outName	output file name	no

Examples

Multifill via JSON

You can generate your JSON for bulk form fills in different ways. The workflow steps are:

Export your form into JSON:

$ pdfcpu form export

Remove all fields which shall remain untouched.
Copy & paste the form element within the forms array.
Edit value (or values where appropriate) for all fields in all form instances.
In addition to modifying value(s) you may change the locked status for fields.
To trigger form filling run:

$ pdfcpu form multifill in.pdf in.json outDir

If you are only interested in a single output file run:

$ pdfcpu form multifill in.pdf in.json outDir --mode merge

Multifill via CSV

Here the basic idea is to represent a form instance with a single CSV line in your input data file. Compared to the JSON way this will reduce the input file size dramatically but it has its limitations when it comes to expressiveness.

firstName	lastName	dob	gender	city	country
Jane	Doe	06.01.2000	*female	San Francisco	USA
Joe	Miller	30.07.2001	*male	São Paulo	Brazil
Jackie	Carson	29.11.1965	*non-binary	Vienna	Austria

The workflow steps are:

Export your form into JSON:

$ pdfcpu form export

Generate a CSV file based on the JSON file you just created and individual form data. Values prefixed with * will be locked. Each column represents a form field identified in the header line by field id:
To trigger form filling run:

$ pdfcpu form multifill in.pdf in.csv outDir

If you are only interested in a single output file run:

$ pdfcpu form multifill in.pdf in.csv outDir --mode merge

For multifill, outDir is still used for generated form instances even when the merged PDF is written to stdout:

$ aws s3 cp s3://acme-forms/application.pdf - \
   | pdfcpu form multifill --mode merge - applications.csv /tmp/pdfcpu-forms - \
   | aws s3 cp - s3://acme-forms/applications-merged.pdf