PDF documents

Quick Reference

Task	Default (Node)	Fallback (Python)
Generate a new PDF from scratch	pdfkit — write a TypeScript program (packages: ["pdfkit"]) and run it via your coding tool; pre-installed in the standard sandbox image	reportlab's platypus — reach for this for a report with several full pages of tabular data, where platypus.Table's built-in pagination beats hand-rolling page breaks in pdfkit (see below)
Fill in an existing PDF form (AcroForm)	pdf-lib — TypeScript program (packages: ["pdf-lib"], pre-installed); form.getTextField(name).setText(value)	pypdf (PdfWriter.update_page_form_field_values)
Extract text from an existing PDF	— (no good Node equivalent)	pdfplumber (also gets tables) or pypdf (faster, text-only)
Extract tables from an existing PDF	— (no good Node equivalent)	pdfplumber (page.extract_tables())

All of the above are already installed/allowlisted — no extra setup either way. Default to pdfkit/pdf-lib in TypeScript for generation and form-filling per this environment's Node-first policy for office-document creation; extraction has no solid Node option here, so stays Python.

Generating a new PDF (pdfkit)

pdfkit is a low-level, stream-based PDF library — it does not have reportlab.platypus's automatic page-flow layout for tables, so you place text yourself and check the vertical position before every element:

import PDFDocument from "pdfkit";
import fs from "fs";

const doc = new PDFDocument({ size: "A4", margins: { top: 50, bottom: 50, left: 50, right: 50 } });
doc.pipe(fs.createWriteStream("report.pdf"));

doc.fontSize(18).text("Invoice", { align: "center" });
doc.moveDown();

// doc.text() without an explicit x/y auto-wraps and flows below the previous
// element, including inserting new pages for long paragraphs — only switch
// to explicit x/y positioning (below) for tabular/columnar layout.
doc.fontSize(11).text("Body text wraps and paginates automatically here.");

doc.end();

• Always set size explicitly ("A4" or "LETTER") rather than relying on the default, since it may not match the user's locale expectation.
• Plain flowing text (paragraphs, letters) needs no manual layout — doc.text() alone handles wrapping and page breaks. Only tabular/columnar content needs the manual pattern below.
• For tabular data (an invoice's line items, a report's data table), pdfkit has no built-in table primitive — draw it with fixed per-column x offsets and a manual page-break check before each row:

const startX = 50;
const colWidths = { desc: 260, qty: 60, total: 90 };
let y = doc.y;

for (const item of items) {
  if (y > doc.page.height - doc.page.margins.bottom - 20) {
    doc.addPage();
    y = doc.page.margins.top;
  }
  doc.text(item.desc, startX, y, { width: colWidths.desc });
  doc.text(String(item.qty), startX + colWidths.desc, y, { width: colWidths.qty, align: "right" });
  doc.text(item.total.toFixed(2), startX + colWidths.desc + colWidths.qty, y, { width: colWidths.total, align: "right" });
  // Compute row height from the tallest cell; fixed values cause overlapping when a cell wraps.
  const rowHeight = Math.max(
    doc.heightOfString(item.desc, { width: colWidths.desc }),
    doc.heightOfString(String(item.qty), { width: colWidths.qty }),
    doc.heightOfString(item.total.toFixed(2), { width: colWidths.total }),
  ) + 4; // 4pt bottom padding
  y += rowHeight;
}

• Always compute row height from doc.heightOfString(text, { width }) across all cells in the row and use the maximum. A fixed row height causes rows to overlap whenever any cell wraps to a second line.
• Reach for reportlab.platypus.Table (Python) instead when the table is long enough that hand-rolling pagination is more work than it's worth — it paginates a table across pages automatically given column widths and a TableStyle.

Wide tables (6+ columns) — preventing overflow

Tables with many columns (ticket lists, dashboards, audit logs) overflow if you use portrait orientation or eyeball column widths. Follow this checklist:

1. Switch to landscape when column count ≥ 6:

   const doc = new PDFDocument({ size: "A4", layout: "landscape", margins: { top: 40, bottom: 40, left: 40, right: 40 } });
   

2. Compute column widths from available page width, never hardcode pixel values:

   const pageWidth = doc.page.width - doc.page.margins.left - doc.page.margins.right;
   // Give variable-length columns (e.g. "Summary") a proportionally larger share
   const fixedColWidth = 70; // narrow cols: status, priority, type, etc.
   const fixedCols = 6;
   const flexColWidth = pageWidth - fixedCols * fixedColWidth; // remainder for "Summary"
   

3. Reduce font size to 8–9pt for dense tables (many rows and columns); header can stay 9–10pt bold.
4. Truncate long cell text rather than letting it overflow into the next column:

   function truncate(original: string, font: string, size: number, maxWidth: number): string {
     let text = original;
     while (doc.widthOfString(text, { font, size }) > maxWidth && text.length > 0) {
       text = text.slice(0, -1);
     }
     return text.length < original.length ? text + "…" : text;
   }
   

   Or use { width: colWidth, ellipsis: true } in the .text() call (pdfkit supports this natively).
5. Wrap within cells as a fallback — pass { width: colWidth } and compute row height with doc.heightOfString(cellText, { width: colWidth }) across all cells in the row, then use the tallest.

Wide tables — reportlab (Python, preferred for 20+ row tables)

reportlab.platypus.Table handles both pagination and cell wrapping automatically when you give it explicit colWidths that sum to the available page width:

from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import A4, landscape
from reportlab.lib.units import mm
from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Table, TableStyle, Paragraph
from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet, ParagraphStyle
from reportlab.lib import colors
from reportlab.lib.enums import TA_LEFT

pagesize = landscape(A4)
doc = SimpleDocTemplate("report.pdf", pagesize=pagesize,
                        topMargin=15*mm, bottomMargin=15*mm,
                        leftMargin=15*mm, rightMargin=15*mm)
available_width = pagesize[0] - 30*mm  # left + right margins

# Assign proportional widths — flex column gets remainder
fixed = {"key": 45*mm, "type": 30*mm, "status": 30*mm,
         "priority": 28*mm, "due": 28*mm, "sprint": 35*mm}
flex_width = available_width - sum(fixed.values())  # "Summary" gets the rest

col_widths = [fixed["key"], flex_width, fixed["type"], fixed["status"],
              fixed["priority"], fixed["due"], fixed["sprint"]]

# Every cell must be a Paragraph — plain strings in Table cells do NOT wrap
styles = getSampleStyleSheet()
cell_style = ParagraphStyle("Cell", parent=styles["Normal"], fontSize=8, leading=10,
                            splitLongWords=True, wordWrap="CJK")
header_style = ParagraphStyle("Header", parent=cell_style, fontSize=9,
                              textColor=colors.white, fontName="Helvetica-Bold")

def P(text, style=cell_style):
    return Paragraph(str(text) if text is not None else "—", style)

table_data = [[P(h, header_style) for h in ["Key", "Summary", "Type", "Status", "Priority", "Due", "Sprint"]]]
for ticket in tickets:
    table_data.append([
        P(ticket["key"]),
        P(ticket["summary"]),
        P(ticket["type"]),
        P(ticket["status"]),
        P(ticket["priority"]),
        P(ticket.get("due", "—")),
        P(ticket.get("sprint", "—")),
    ])

table = Table(table_data, colWidths=col_widths, repeatRows=1)
table.setStyle(TableStyle([
    ("BACKGROUND", (0, 0), (-1, 0), colors.HexColor("#2c3e50")),
    # TEXTCOLOR/FONTNAME/FONTSIZE for header are now carried by header_style Paragraph
    ("FONTSIZE", (0, 1), (-1, -1), 8),
    ("ROWBACKGROUNDS", (0, 1), (-1, -1), [colors.white, colors.Color(0.95, 0.95, 0.95)]),
    ("GRID", (0, 0), (-1, -1), 0.4, colors.grey),
    ("VALIGN", (0, 0), (-1, -1), "TOP"),
    ("TOPPADDING", (0, 0), (-1, -1), 4),
    ("BOTTOMPADDING", (0, 0), (-1, -1), 4),
    ("LEFTPADDING", (0, 0), (-1, -1), 4),
    ("RIGHTPADDING", (0, 0), (-1, -1), 4),
]))
doc.build([table])

Key points:

• landscape(A4) — always use landscape for 6+ column tables.
• colWidths must sum to available_width — if they exceed it, the table overflows the page; if they're omitted, reportlab auto-sizes but often overflows.
• Wrap every cell in Paragraph(..., style) — including headers and short cells. Plain strings inside a Table cell never wrap; they clip or overflow regardless of colWidths. This is the #1 cause of reportlab table overflow. Use a helper P(text, style=cell_style) to keep the data-building code readable. Add splitLongWords=True, wordWrap="CJK" to cell_style so URLs and other long unbreakable tokens are force-split rather than overflowing.
• repeatRows=1 — repeats the header row on every page when the table spans multiple pages.
• Font size 8–9pt for body, 9–10pt for header — standard for dense reports.

Filling in a form (pdf-lib)

import { PDFDocument } from "pdf-lib";
import fs from "fs";

const pdfDoc = await PDFDocument.load(fs.readFileSync("form.pdf"));
const form = pdfDoc.getForm();
for (const field of form.getFields()) console.log(field.getName(), field.constructor.name); // discover field names/types first

form.getTextField("first_name").setText("Jane");
fs.writeFileSync("filled.pdf", await pdfDoc.save());

Field names are exactly what the form's original author named them (often generic like Text1) — always call form.getFields() first rather than guessing. pdf-lib is also the right tool for merging/splitting existing PDFs (PDFDocument.copyPages) if that comes up alongside form-filling.

Extracting content (Python — no solid Node equivalent for this)

• pdfplumber: page.extract_text() for reading order-preserving text, page.extract_tables() for tabular data — the better default for anything that might contain a table, since pypdf's text extraction does not attempt to reconstruct table structure.
• pypdf: faster and sufficient when you only need plain text and know the source has no tables (e.g. extracting a paragraph from a text-heavy report).
• Scanned (image-only) PDFs have no extractable text via either library — check page.extract_text() for an empty/near-empty result and tell the user OCR would be needed (not available in this environment) rather than returning an empty string silently.

Not supported in this environment

• Converting an existing .docx/.pptx/.xlsx to PDF requires a rendering engine (LibreOffice) not installed in the sandbox yet.