How to use pdftk with python without creating physical file on disk?

Question

I'm using pdftk and python to pass http post data to a request handler that generates and returns a pdf file as an http response.

Here is my current code:

import os
from fdfgen import forge_fdf

from django.views.generic.edit import FormView
from django.http import HttpResponse

from myapp.forms import PdfForm



class PdfAutofillFormView(FormView):
    form_class = PdfForm

    def form_valid(self, form):
        fields = [('first_field', form.cleaned_data.get('blah', '')),
                  ('second_field', form.cleaned_data.get('blahblah', '')),]

        fdf = forge_fdf("", fields, [], [], [])
        fdf_file = open("/tmp/data.fdf", "wb")
        fdf_file.write(fdf)
        fdf_file.close()

        cmd = 'pdftk %s fill_form %s output %s dont_ask' % \
            ('/home/myuser/original.pdf',
             '/tmp/data.fdf',
             '/tmp/output.pdf',)
        os.system(cmd)

        return HttpResponse(open('/tmp/output.pdf', 'r'),
                            mimetype="application/pdf")

Although this works, it creates two tmp files on disk (data.fdf and output.pdf).

I'm looking for a way to pipe data.fdf and output.pdf to in memory files (not on disk).

Answer 1

I ended creating a ram disk folder on the OS