FormAPI
Dev tools
pdf form filling api
SHOW HN2017
209points
85comments
#153of 2,242 in 2017
Top 7%of 2017 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
12 positive, 19 neutral or asking, 2 mixed, 7 critical, out of 40 comments about the project. Thread score +0.03.
Idea: 6 for, 3 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 4 againstDesign: 3 for, 0 againstExecution: 1 for, 0 againstPricing: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Clean UI and effective demo
From 2 comments
Fantastic work! The UI looks really slick! How long have you been working on this project?
plicense on HNThis looks really good and the demo is really effective. Best of luck to you! Was DocRaptor a big influence on how you priced it? Shameless plug: I've also recently been working…
fetch1 on HN
Interesting declarative approach
From 1 comment
this is an interesting idea. i like how it is declarative. acrobat FDF[1] and Apache PDFBox[2] provide something similar but are not declarative. i'd be interested in seeing an…
gowan on HN
Objections
Not PCI or HIPAA compliant, so sensitive data is a concern
From 2 comments
From the terms: FormAPI is not PCI DSS Certified or HIPAA compliant. You understand that the technical processing and transmission of the Service, including your Content, may be…
Animats on HNMost forms contain personally identifiable information. Some contain extremely sensitive information, for example the kinds of forms that you describe-visas, etc.- contain…
efitz on HN
Service sees user data; prefers self-hosting
From 2 comments
From the terms: FormAPI is not PCI DSS Certified or HIPAA compliant. You understand that the technical processing and transmission of the Service, including your Content, may be…
Animats on HNMost forms contain personally identifiable information. Some contain extremely sensitive information, for example the kinds of forms that you describe-visas, etc.- contain…
efitz on HN
Pricing page is overly granular
From 1 comment
@nathan_f77: That's an unusually large plans and pricing page: https://formapi.io/sign_up I'm not saying that it's bad, but I think it's strongly worth your while A/B testing…
jv22222 on HN
Requests
Self-hosted or on-premise option
From 2 comments
I totally agree, these forms can contain very sensitive information. Actually there is some information that is too sensitive - We are not currently PCI DSS Certified or HIPAA…
nathan_f77 on HNThanks for the feedback! I mentioned this in another comment, but we have licenses for on-site hosting, and can provide Docker or virtual machine images. In the future, we are…
nathan_f77 on HN
Signature support
From 2 comments
How does this handle user signatures?
taariqlewis on HNWould be interested to hear a bit about the internals. Which PDF libraries you tried, which one you ended up using, why, etc.
tyingq on HN
Support for scanned PDFs via OCR
From 1 comment
Hi, at the moment we can only import fillable PDF forms (AcroForms or XFA.) In the future we might implement OCR and machine learning to automatically detect fields in scanned or…
nathan_f77 on HN
Questions
How signatures are handled
From 2 comments
How does this handle user signatures?
taariqlewis on HNLooks good. I think some real life use cases would help on the sales site. So the use case is you have a company that only accepts PDFs as an input and you have a digital data…
jonaldomo on HN
Whether the source code is available
From 1 comment
Most forms contain personally identifiable information. Some contain extremely sensitive information, for example the kinds of forms that you describe-visas, etc.- contain…
efitz on HN
Whether a public API or whitelabel embedding is planned
From 1 comment
Will there be an API sometime in the future? Also will it be possible to whitelabel the template editor and/or make it embeddable?
chromano on HN
Alternatives named
PDF Otter
From 1 comment
Hey Nathan! Great to see another product in the PDF space. I see a few similarities to PDF Otter[0] and was wondering if you drew any inspiration from it. [0]…
mariusz331 on HN
DocRaptor
From 2 comments
This looks really good and the demo is really effective. Best of luck to you! Was DocRaptor a big influence on how you priced it? Shameless plug: I've also recently been working…
fetch1 on HNHi, thanks very much! Yes, I really liked DocRaptor's sign-up page and pricing. FetchPDF looks great! Best of luck to you as well!
nathan_f77 on HN
SeamlessDocs
From 1 comment
This is what SeamlessDocs [1] are doing for government forms, and I've been thinking about doing something similar for immigration. [1] https://www.seamlessdocs.com/
nathan_f77 on HN
PlatoForms
From 1 comment
I like this service as well: https://www.platoforms.com.
steveneo on HN
php-pdftk
From 1 comment
There exists also php-pdftk (https://github.com/mikehaertl/php-pdftk). Great software for filling pdf forms.
asteinbr on HN