Is there a way to generate a PDF file out of a JSON file?

Question

I'm using pdf2json (https://github.com/modesty/pdf2json) to convert some PDF files to JSON. I am modifying the JSON files (the ones generated by pdf2json) and then I would like to obtain the corresponding PDF files using the modified JSON files. Is there a way to achieve this?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

As described by JohnWhitington the best JSon round trip for edits is probably cpdf as that is its aim in that area.

An alternative for generating from scratch or GO is http://pdfcpu.io/create/create. hence if you parse some existing textual source like JSon out from any app, into compatible input format you can build a fresh complex PDF with that simplistic source.

An absolute Cross Platform bargain at only 9.42 MB of usb space for windows

echo { "pages": { "1": { "content": { "text": [ { "value": "Hello pdfcpu World!","anchor": "center", "font": { "name": "Helvetica", "size": 12 } } ] } } }} >text.json

pdfcpu create text.json helloworld.pdf&HelloWorld.pdf

But then again we don't need any extra apps to generate PDF in Windows as it can do that using native constructs. Here I did not bother padding my words on line 5 from left to right automatically in notepad (my texpad.vbs) so it shows A PDF has no margins unless defined as voids or spaces (or tabs converted to such).

Answer 2

A quick look at that page suggests that pdf2json does not export enough information to round-trip back to PDF - it just extracts a useful subset of the PDF.

To round-trip, you can use

cpdf -output-json in.pdf -o out.json

Then modify the JSON file and use:

cpdf -j out.json -o out.pdf

If you want to also edit the page content, you will need

cpdf -output-json -output-json-parse-content-streams -o out.json

instead of the first command.