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Ask HN: Which pdf form filler do you use?

by xstartup on 6/23/18, 7:15 AM with 4 comments

When I search for "pdf form filler", I see many websites. I don't have time to audit their code. Some might be selling our data.

So, which pdf form filler should we use if we do not want our filled data to be leaked or sold.

  • by chatmasta on 6/23/18, 11:55 AM

    Do you mean as user filling the forms or as a developer writing software to fill the forms?

    As a user, just use Acrobat or Preview.

    As a developer, there are lots of options. Check out python pdf libraries. There is also a lot of work going into JS PDF libraries if you want to keep everything on the client.

    Actually, this is one area where I’m excited about web assembly. There are so many native tools for working with pdf. Compiling those to wasm and running them on the client opens some really interesting posssibilities.

  • by saluki on 6/25/18, 10:09 PM

    OSX preview is the best pdf filler I have adobe acrobat too but prefer apple preview, way easier to use and less issues with created pdf files.

    acrobat is nice occasionally for more complex stuff, but if I can do it in preview I use that.

  • by LarryMade2 on 6/23/18, 2:32 PM

    Yeah, if its programmatic PDF filling, it depends on your language/platform of choice (make a comment with that to get more relevant responses). For PHP I'd recommend TCPDF with FPDi.

  • by rahimnathwani on 6/25/18, 7:26 PM