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Govermenty forms even more governmenty with FillPDF and Rules

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Submitted by ansondparker on Mon, 03/30/2015 - 15:08

When working with government agencies the sacred form may raise it's fugly formatted head now and again.  Despite attempts at logic "Wouldn't an XLS spreadsheet be easier for everyone?" it sometimes comes down to what's simpler - gettin' er done vs doin' it right.... and if no one really cares about doin' it right, gettin' er done becomes the (sloppy) way, (half)truth, and (dim) light....

So yeah - I had a form that needed to be pixel perfect so that a state-wide agency could print the forms up and store them in a manilla folder... I started working with Views PDF.  This did generate pdf's... and along with mimemail and rules we were sending PDF's out... but they just weren't looking like folks wanted them... FillPDF - thank you.

To use FillPDF we started by installing pdftk (apt-get install pdftk on ubuntu) and then installing the module as per usual....  here's the rest step-by-step 

Anyhow - the net result was a bunch of pdfs with the proper fields filled in and all pixel pretty and such.... a miserable project made significantly less miserable - thanks to the good folks who keep FillPDF rolling!

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