Skip to main content

Tutorial 11: Create a PDF stamp

Estimated time: 10 min.

Prerequisites​

PDF stamp - Intro​

In this tutorial, you will learn how you can put text stamps on PDF files. With this, you can put incoming date stamps or watermarks on PDFs.

1 - Provide the invoice PDF​

In the first step, you need to upload a sample PDF which can be used for this tutorial.

If you don’t have a sample invoice PDF at hand, you can use this one:

invoice.pdf

  1. Login to the portal https://NAMESPACE.pipeforce.net

  2. Click on Files / Drive. The Drive WebUI opens.

  3. Upload the sample invoice PDF in the root folder of your drive. Keep the name invoice.pdf:

2 - Create the stamp pipeline​

In the next step, you will create a pipeline which loads the PDF, puts a stamp on it, and saves the stamped PDF back to drive:

  1. Login to the portal https://NAMESPACE.pipeforce.net

  2. Navigate to LOW CODE → Workbench

  3. Select the node of your app or create a new one.

  4. Click the plus icon at the top of the tree.

  5. The new property view opens:

    1. As property key, use: global/app/YOUR_APP/pipeline/pdf-stamp
    2. As mime type, use: application/yaml; type=pipeline

  6. Click SAVE

  7. The new property has been created, and the content editor was opened for you.

  8. Now copy and paste this content into the editor, and overwrite any existing data there by this:

    pipeline:
      - drive.read:
          path: "invoice.pdf"
      - pdf.stamp:
          text: "RECEIVED #{@date.timestamp()}"
      - drive.save:
          path: "invoice-received.pdf"

  9. Your pipeline now consists of three commands:

    1. Load the PDF document from drive using the command drive.read.
    2. Put a PDF stamp on this loaded invoice using the pdf.stamp command. Additionally, we use the @date PEL util here to return the current date and time.
    3. Store the stamped PDF document back to drive under a new name invoice-received.pdf using the command drive.save.

  10. Click SAVE and then RUN to execute the pipeline.

  11. After a refresh of the drive page, you should see a new PDF invoice-received.pdf:

  12. Open the invoice-received.pdf. You should see the generated stamp at the top right corner:

  13. Done. Congratulations!

3 - Extra: Send PDF inline via email​

A very often use case is, to put a stamp to a PDF, and then send it via email to one or more recipients. Because of this, we will show you here how to do so with the stamped PDF in the same pipeline:

  1. Open your pipeline pdf-stamp and change it to this: 

    pipeline:
      - drive.read:
          path: "invoice.pdf"
      - pdf.stamp:
          text: "RECEIVED #{@date.timestamp()}"
      - drive.save:
          path: "invoice-received.pdf"
          cleanupBody: false
      - mail.send:
          to: "you@domain.tld"
          subject: "Invoice received"
          message: "Hello, we received your invoice. Thanks!"
          attachments: "#{body}"

  2. As you can see, we did several adjustments to this pipeline:

    1. We added the parameter cleanupBody: false to drive.save. This keeps the final PDF in the body for use of the next command.
    2. We added mail.send as next command, which will take the PDF from the body as an attachment and send it via email to the given recipient. Note the #{body} expression in the attachment parameter, which points to the body of the pipeline where the PDF resides temporarily.

  3. Replace you@domain.tld by your real email address.

  4. Click SAVE and then RUN.

  5. After a while, you should receive an email with the stamped PDF as an attachment.

  6. Done.

Report an Issue​

Your help is needed!

In case you're missing something on this page, you found an error or you have an idea for improvement, please click here to create a new issue. Another way to contribute is, to click Edit this page below and directly add your changes in GitHub. Many thanks for your contribution in order to improve PIPEFORCE!