

Ask HN: Whould you be interested in an PDF customization API? - trez

We are building an API which allow to integrate some external data (POST request) to an existing design. That allow to integrate easily web2print feature in any website.
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frankydp
How would this be different from the multiple products already in the market?

FPDFI, PDFLIB and Zend_PDF wkhtmltopdf flying-saucer

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trez
All theses library are about creating a PDF from scratch whereas our API
should allow to customize an already existing PDF

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frankydp
Editing draw stream is creation. Once you parse the original the only real way
to update the original stream is mark invalid and push in the updated stream.

If you are only looking to edit xmp/meta/comments then you could possibly use
an edit or amend but would still need one of the pdf libraries to post
process.

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doodku
I can just emit PS and use ps2pdf. PS is just text, so any language can do
that. There's already an API - it's called Unix pipes!

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trez
never heard of that ;) Indeed, manual processing is an option if you are ok to
add some code any time a user want a new PDF design. That's not a really
scalable process if your number of PDFs is increasing. It's also not a viable
option for less technical users

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doodku
I'm sure it's computationally equivalent to what you're doing - it's a
function from some input data and some template to a PDF file - so I don't
follow your thesis that it would be less scalable (for some definition of
scalable that you don't give).

You could even use some tech like Handlebars to do it with Node.js, so using
your existing stack.

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trez
By scalable I mean accessible to a large number of user because that won't
require too specific skills. My assumption is CSS is a more common skills than
linux commands

