# Need help with report building. PDF or IMG or what? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [July 24, 2008, 8:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/need-help-with-report-building-pdf-or-img-or-what/144032 "2008-07-24T20:02:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/dec6dc/32.png) [@squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/squeegy)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2008, 8:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/need-help-with-report-building-pdf-or-img-or-what/144032/1 "2008-07-24T20:02:48Z")
This is real important, so I hope you can help! Okay I have to take this report: [http://www.ub04.net/downloads/UB04\_10-23-06\_B%20W%20PDF.pdf](http://www.ub04.net/downloads/UB04_10-23-06_B%20W%20PDF.pdf) and fill it in with ruby on rails. I need advice on the best way to do that. They are basically only going to need to print the document, that makes it somewhat easier, but still this ain’t easy. So what should I do? Last time I had to do something like this I just reverse engineered an HTML version of the form. This probably won’t happen this time because the report is so complicated. Could I add my text with some sort of positioning to the PDF? With like PDF writer? And can you get me started on how to do this? Should I just treat the whole report as an image and try to figure out how to draw the text I need. And can you get me started on how to do this? Or what? Thank you all so much if you can help me! ---
**Author:** ![squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/dec6dc/32.png) [@squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/squeegy)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2008, 8:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/need-help-with-report-building-pdf-or-img-or-what/144032/2 "2008-07-24T20:14:47Z")
On Thu, 2008-07-24 at 20:02 +0200, Alex Williams wrote: > reverse engineered an HTML version of the form. This probably won’t > > Thank you all so much if you can help me! * * * [http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/HowtoGeneratePDFs](http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/HowtoGeneratePDFs) I use both rjb (ruby java bridge with itext) and pdftk - depending upon what I need to do. itext can’t do checkboxes. Craig ---
**Author:** ![squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/dec6dc/32.png) [@squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/squeegy)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2008, 8:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/need-help-with-report-building-pdf-or-img-or-what/144032/3 "2008-07-24T20:39:26Z")
Hi Alex, Alex Williams wrote: > Could I add my text with some sort of positioning to the PDF? > With like PDF writer? And can you get me started on how to > do this? I did something very similar using PDF::Writer. You can see a demo at [YourTimeMatters.com](http://YourTimeMatters.com) and, if you’re interested in seeing how I did it, the code’s at [rubyforge.org/projects/ccredit](http://rubyforge.org/projects/ccredit). Feel free to contact me offlist if you’d like. Note that I seem to have something screwed up a little bit with the CSS for the fieldset around the ‘reports’ on the final page in FireFox. Looks fine in IE ;-p. HTH, Bill ---
**Author:** ![squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/dec6dc/32.png) [@squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/squeegy)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 2:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/need-help-with-report-building-pdf-or-img-or-what/144032/4 "2008-07-25T14:53:41Z")
Hi Alex, Alex Williams wrote: > Thank you Bill and Craig. I’ve been trying to get PDF::Writer > to work for a little while now. HOWEVER, it looks like it can > only create them, it cannot open an EXISTING PDF file and > edit it. > > Is there a way to do that? Your original post didn’t mention the need to read / edit existing PDF files. If you do, the answer depends primarily on whether those files are ones you generated, or ones generated by third parties. If you need to edit PDFs that you generated, you can follow the route I took. I used PDF::Writer to create PDF files that Acrobat understands and can display, and pdftk to attach XML files containing the data that’s displayed via the PDF. The PDF itself essentially becomes an image, but my app (or any other that understands the XML schema) can extract the XML data from the PDF, edit it, and create a new PDF (or overwrite the old one). If, on the other hand, you need to read / edit PDFs that were generated by someone else, you’re probably going to have to use Adobe’s tools. There are some tools around that can read / extract form data from older versions of Adobe’s PDFs, but Adobe’s changed the whole way that’s handled in recent versions. The old approach was known as FDF, I think. I can’t remember what the new one’s called but the bottom line is, AFAIK, there are no open source libraries to generate / consume the new format. The standard’s open, so you could conceivably generate your own. But be careful. Adobe’s license says something like “if you use any of our tools, you can’t use any of anybody else’s”. HTH, Bill ---
**Author:** ![squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/dec6dc/32.png) [@squeegy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/squeegy)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2008, 9:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/need-help-with-report-building-pdf-or-img-or-what/144032/5 "2008-07-24T21:59:49Z")
Bill W. wrote: > Hi Alex, > > Alex Williams wrote: > > > Could I add my text with some sort of positioning to the PDF? > > With like PDF writer? And can you get me started on how to > > do this? > > I did something very similar using PDF::Writer. You can see a demo at > [YourTimeMatters.com](http://YourTimeMatters.com) and, if you’re interested in seeing how I did it, > the > code’s at [rubyforge.org/projects/ccredit](http://rubyforge.org/projects/ccredit). Feel free to contact me > offlist > if you’d like. Note that I seem to have something screwed up a little > bit > with the CSS for the fieldset around the ‘reports’ on the final page in > FireFox. Looks fine in IE ;-p. > > HTH, > Bill Thank you Bill and Craig. I’ve been trying to get PDF::Writer to work for a little while now. HOWEVER, it looks like it can only create them, it cannot open an EXISTING PDF file and edit it. Is there a way to do that? Thank you again!