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onetaiko-pdf-writer

Pulls a CSV of registration data and form fills it into a PDF registration form. This is used to pre-populate our registration forms on the first day of classes given the Google Form responses so that students don't need to spend much time filling out registration forms.

Component Overview

This tool combines a few components together to build an integration pipeline:

Google Pre-Registration Form

The pre-registration form is a google form which is linked on our main website at www.onetaiko.org. When students register for classes, they will fill out this webform at home with their information

Google Sheets Responses

A google sheet exists which contains all of the responses from the google form. This is the form data which gets imported into the PDF forms. Form data can be loaded via a local CSV file or via a google sheets shareable link.

NOTE: Google sheet links will only work if it is a single sheet, as the CSV format does not support multiple sheets per file

Registration PDF

The registration PDF was built and made editable using LibreOffice. Form fields can be added using this tool and given a unique reference name by right clicking the form field, clicking "Controls", and giving it a name.

The document must first be converted from PDF to the Native LibreOffice .odg format for Libre office to be able to make edits to the form fields. Once all form field controls have been added, LibreOffice can export it back as a new editable PDF.

If the PDF writer is filling the data in, but it is not alligning correctly within the text field cells, you can update the vertical allignment of the cell to allow the text to display correctly. Often times, the text may show up to low in the form field, so setting vertical allignment to "top" on the text field can help fix this rendering issue.

PDF Writer

Finally, this pdf writer project will combine the CSV responses into the editable PDF and generate one filled PDF per row. This is done by using Apache PDFBox to cross-reference CSV response names with editable PDF field names.

Updating form fields

All field mappings from CSV to PDF fields are in the FieldSetter.java file. If field names are changed, this is the file to update

Testing the project

The project can be run easily by running the Main.java file and updating the file variables to point to a source CSV and target output folder.

Building the project

This project uses maven to build and package as an executable jar. You should be able to build it by running

mvn package

Running the project

With java installed, you can execute the jar from your operating system file explorer or by running

java -jar <path/to/jar>

Common Issues

Libre Office

Text entered into field is too high / too low

Right click the form field and open the "Control" panel. Make sure the following are set appropriately:

  • "Text type" should be "Single-line"
  • "Vert. Allignment" should be set to Top/Bottom appropriately
Text entered into field is too large / small

Right click the form field and open the "Control" panel. From "Font", click on "..." for more options and set the font size appropriately

Font rendering issues in Adobe Acrobat

LibreOffice defaults to using the LiberationSans font-family for form fields, which is not installed by default on most systems.

To get around this, right click each form field and make sure the font is set to Times New Roman