How to fill PDF form in python?

Question

I'm searching best way to fill pre-made pdf with forms with database data and "flatten" it. For now I use pdftk, but it does not process national characters correctly

Is there any library for python or example how to fill pdf form and render it to non-editable PDF?

Answer 1

Give the fillpdf library a try, it makes this process very simple (pip install fillpdf and poppler dependency conda install -c conda-forge poppler)

Basic usage:

from fillpdf import fillpdfs

fillpdfs.get_form_fields("blank.pdf")

# returns a dictionary of fields
# Set the returned dictionary values a save to a variable
# For radio boxes ('Off' = not filled, 'Yes' = filled)

data_dict = {
'Text2': 'Name',
'Text4': 'LastName',
'box': 'Yes',
}

fillpdfs.write_fillable_pdf('blank.pdf', 'new.pdf', data_dict)

# If you want it flattened:
fillpdfs.flatten_pdf('new.pdf', 'newflat.pdf')

More info here: https://github.com/t-houssian/fillpdf

Seems to fill very well.

See this answer here for more info: https://stackoverflow.com/a/66809578/13537359

Answer 2

Straight from the PyPDF2 docs (added years after the question was asked):

from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader, PdfFileWriter

reader = PdfFileReader("form.pdf")
writer = PdfFileWriter()

page = reader.pages[0]
fields = reader.getFields()

writer.addPage(page)

# Now you add your data to the forms!
writer.updatePageFormFieldValues(
    writer.getPage(0), {"fieldname": "some filled in text"}
)

# write "output" to PyPDF2-output.pdf
with open("filled-out.pdf", "wb") as output_stream:
    writer.write(output_stream)