In the admin: Templates › PDF › a template
A PDF template is a page designed with pdfme: fields placed on the page, each filled from your data when the PDF is rendered. Acme renders a Work order PDF with the order's details, its photos and the customer's signature.
The designer
Above the designer, the page size: Letter, Legal, Tabloid, receipt widths (58, 80 and 112 mm) or Custom, with Width, Height and Margin. A new template starts on an A4 page. A template whose page is a fixed PDF file keeps that file's size.
Fields you can place: text, multi-variable text, table, list, line, rectangle, ellipse, image, SVG, signature, select, checkbox, radio group, circle mark, date, time, date-time, QR code and barcodes (Code 128, EAN-13, UPC-A).
Each field's name is the key its value comes from. The designer needs a large screen: on a phone or tablet the template opens read-only.
Preview renders the template with each field's sample value, unsaved changes included.
Data
The data is an object with a value per field name. A table takes its rows as a list of lists of text; a multi-variable text takes an object:
{
"number": "WO-000123",
"customer": "Hotel Salta Plaza",
"parts": [["Capacitor 35 µF", "2"], ["Gas R410A", "1 kg"]]
}
Rendering a PDF
- A workflow: the step Generate PDF from template takes the template and the data and returns a file. See Steps › Documents.
- The API:
curl -s -X POST https://acme.example/api/totalbase/table/templates/{id}/pdf \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{ "data": { "number": "WO-000123", "customer": "Hotel Salta Plaza" } }' \
-o WO-000123.pdf
The answer is the PDF, named after the template's slug. It needs READ on the template; errors are TEMPLATE_NOT_FOUND, TEMPLATE_ACCESS_DENIED and TEMPLATE_WRONG_KIND. Copy URL, in the editor's ⋯, copies this address.
A DataView's Print doesn't use templates: it prints the grid or the record as they are.