This is the rough outline of a regular (weekly) job that fills in a PDF form and will email it. There are 3 aspects: 1. [percolate studio's meteor cron](https://github.com/percolatestudio/meteor-synced-cron) 2. PDFtk installed 3. [meteor pdftk wrapper](https://github.com/pascoual/meteor-pdftk) The sample PDF with acrofields for this demo can be …

fill_pdf_in_meteor.js

var meteor_root = Npm.require('fs').realpathSync(process.cwd() + '/../');
var application_root = Npm.require('fs').realpathSync(meteor_root + '/../');

// if running on dev mode
var fs = Npm.require('fs');
if (Npm.require('path').basename(fs.realpathSync(meteor_root + '/../../../')) == '.meteor') {
  application_root = fs.realpathSync(meteor_root + '/../../../../');
}
var assets_folder = meteor_root + '/server/assets/';

SyncedCron.add({
  name: 'Crunch some important numbers for the marketing department',
  schedule: function (parser) {
    // parser is a later.parse object
    return parser.text('every 1 minute');
  },
  job: function () {
    console.log('crunching numbers')
  }
});


Meteor.startup(function () {
  // code to run on server at startup
  SyncedCron.start();

  // Stop jobs after 15 seconds
//  Meteor.setTimeout(function () {
//    SyncedCron.stop();
//  }, 15 * 1000);
//  

  //TODO: get rid of this.
  // try and generate a PDF
  console.log("meteor_root:");
  console.log(meteor_root);
  console.log("application_root");
  console.log(application_root);
  console.log("assets_folder");
  console.log(assets_folder);
  createFilledForm();
});

// example to create a stamped pdf is: 
//PDFTK.stamp('.../sample.pdf',
//            '.../pdfStamp.pdf',
//            '.../result.pdf',
//            function (err, buffer) {
//                if (err)
//                    console.log(err);
//            });

function getXFDF() {
  //TODO: make this dynamic
  data = '\'<?xml version="1+0" encoding="UTF-8"?>\
        <xfdf xmlns="http://ns+adobe+com/xfdf/" xml:space="preserve">\
        <fields>\
          <field name="Text2">\
            <value>Value2</value>\
          </field>\
          <field name="Text3">\
            <value>Value3</value>\
          </field>\
          <field name="Text4">\
            <value>Value4</value>\
          </field>\
          <field name="Text5">\
            <value>Value5</value>\
          </field>\
        </fields>\
        </xfdf>\'';
//<ids original="'+md5(file)+'" modified="'+time()+'" />'+"\n"+

  return data;
}

function fillFormWithXFDF(xfdffile) {
  PDFTK.fillForm(assets_folder + 'packages/prestart/server/sample.pdf',
          xfdffile,
          function (err, buffer) {
            if (err)
              console.log(err);
            else {
              console.log(buffer);
              console.log("=== I think that was a PDF ===");
              fs.writeFile(assets_folder + 'packages/prestart/server/results.pdf', buffer, 'binary', function (err) {
                if (err) {
                  throw (new Meteor.Error(500, 'Failed to save file.', err));
                } else {
                  console.log('results.pdf was saved.');
                }
              });
            }
          });
}

function createFilledForm() {
// TODO Add file existance checks, etc...
  var filename = assets_folder + 'packages/prestart/server/myFile.tmp';
  fs.writeFile(filename, getXFDF(), 'UTF-8', function (err) {
    if (err) {
      throw (new Meteor.Error(500, 'Failed to save file.', err));
    } else {
      console.log('The file ' + filename + ' (' + 'UTF-8' + ') was saved.');
      fillFormWithXFDF(filename);
    }
  });

}