I’m currently working on an application that relies heavily on building PDFs for print with visualization built in for customers. The process to lay out these PDFs is currently a trial and error process with various X and Y coordinates than rendering the PDF server-side. I was wondering whether there is some type of client/server-side open source library which could be used to make this a drag and drop process instead.
The ideal scenario would be to allow admins to upload a PDF than drag and drop blocks of content that would later be filled in dynamically with information such as the customer address, etc whom purchases the product associated with any given PDF.
I started doing some search and came across this which I learned about through this article. However, my first concern with these are accuracy and whether they would be a viable option for generating PDFs that are sent directly to the printer. Currently everything is done server-side through a PHP PDF library. I would essentially like to either replace that with a more flexible solution or provide real-time rendering of PDFs with drag and drop HTML components on top of them.
Has anyone done something similar to this or have any recommendations?