Fill PDF using GeneralPDFUtils

[Sandeep Rajput]

Recently I came across a question How to edit PDF attachment with record details where the questioner was facing issues while using the GeneralPDFUtils while generating the PDFs with pre-populated information fetched from a record. 

Though there are several ways using which the PDF can be generated in ServiceNow once such example is https://www.servicenow.com/community/developer-articles/generating-custom-pdfs-using-the-new-pdfgene... which uses PDFGeneration API.

Once such alternative is GeneralPdfUtils which is a script include available in ServiceNow which allows populating Fillable PDFs with values fetched from any record on the fly.

Here is an example how I used this script include to fetch the available fields from the fillable PDF, and populate the data into it.

Here is the sample script I used.

Here I attached my fillable PDF on an incident record and populated values in it by fetching them from the incident record.

var list = new GlideRecord("incident");
if (list.get('e5cedec14776611092c98021336d438d')){
    var attachment = new GlideRecord('sys_attachment');
    if(attachment.get('table_sys_id',list.getValue('sys_id'))){
        gs.info(attachment.getValue('file_name'));

        var pdfUtils = new global.GeneralPdfUtils();
        gs.info(pdfUtils.getPDFFields(attachment.sys_id));//Provides you the names of fields within PDF
        var jsonForPDF = '{"Check Box1":"","Check Box2":"","Address":"'+list.caller_id.company.street+ ' '+list.caller_id.company.city +', '+list.caller_id.company.state+', '+list.caller_id.company.zip+'","Text6":"This is fillable","Text5":"PDF","Name":"'+list.caller_id.first_name+' '+list.caller_id.last_name+'","Group6":"","Dropdown3":"","Dropdown2":"","Dropdown1":"","Check Box3":"false","Button7":"","Check Box4":"true"}';
        //gs.print(jsonForPDF)
        pdfUtils.prefillPdf(jsonForPDF,list.getValue('sys_id'),attachment.getValue('sys_id'),'incident','filled_pdf'+Math.random()+'.pdf');
        
        
    } 
       
}

In order to be sure about the field names present in the fillable PDF, use the following method.

pdfUtils.getPDFFields(attachment.sys_id); //Provides the list of fillable field names in a JSON format.

Here is how my fillable PDF looks when it is empty. 

Here is how it looks when the data is filled into it using the script shared earlier.

Attached is the fillable PDF for your reference. Test it by attaching it on any incident record and use the sys_id of that incident on line of two of this script.

list.get('e5cedec14776611092c98021336d438d'); //Change this with your incident sample record.

Hope this helps.