Search code examples
rubypdfherokusplitpdftk

Statically compile pdftk for Heroku. Need to split PDF into single page files

So we're using heroku to host our rails application. We've moved to the cedar stack. This stack does not have the pdftk library installed. I contacted support and was told to statically compile it for amd64 ubuntu and include it in my application.

This has proved more difficult than I thought. Initially I downloaded the package for ubuntu (http://packages.ubuntu.com/natty/pdftk), extracted it, and included the binary file as well as the shared libraries. I'm getting strange errors like:

Unhandled Java Exception:
java.lang.NullPointerException
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfCopy.copyIndirect(pdftk)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfCopy.copyObject(pdftk)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfCopy.copyDictionary(pdftk)

I'm assuming this is because some of the dependencies aren't installed?

So here are my questions:

  1. Is there an easier way to statically compile a library? Or do I need to move over its binary file as well as all of its libraries and dependencies?
  2. I'm just trying to split a multi-page PDF into single page files in ruby. Is there a way to do this without PDFTK? Or am I stuck with trying to statically compile PDFTK?

Thanks for the help, I know this isn't an easy problem, but would really appreciate help with this one. I've wasted close to 6 hours trying to get this damn thing to work.

Solution

  • Unfortunately Heroku keeps stripping out magic to add flexibility. As a result it feels more and more like the days when I used to manage and maintain my own servers. There is no easy solution. My "monkey patch" is to send the file to a server that I can install PDFTK, process the file, and send it back. Not great, but it works. Having to deal with this defeats the purpose of using heroku.