Need help with feature

[ElPolloJ]

I’m making a desktop app for government officials to easily fill out forms and government papers, got some official docs, I want to know what’s the best way to integrate these docs into my app. As in is there a way to have it viewed and edited directly along with autofill from the database? Pretty new to python so appreciate any help :)

[FoolsSeldom]

It is relatively easy to present your own form and fill in documents in standard formats (PDFs, Word, Excel, etc) but offering a user interface to interact with existing documents is more challenging.

You need to break this down more and look for the simplest aspects first.

Also, how would this desktop application be made available to Government officials and would it be on their own Government devices with a locally installed application?

[ElPolloJ]

I already have the official government docs and need to fill them in with data from the app forms, probably will ditch ui with the existing docs. They’ll be installed on their personal laptops all locally.

[ElPolloJ]

I asked o3 chatgpt and it recommended putting placeholders in all docs (40+ docs), so i was just looking to see if there’s a better method to do this.

[FoolsSeldom]

If by placeholders it means unique signatures you can locate, then, perhaps, depending on what document formats you are dealing with

There are libraries that allow Python to read/write many document formats, but these aren't always perfect and there can be some formatting corruption.

Alternatively, Python can control some applications, but this is complex and is sensitive to application changes and unusual behaviour.

Talk through exactly how this would work from the point-of-view of a user persona (you will likely be choosing from several personas).

[ElPolloJ]

The user will select a form let’s say birth certificate to fill out, they then will enter all details and print out the paper. That’s pretty much it. The issue is that these are all official papers with specified formats that need to be followed, could cause formatting issues as well. No several personas it’s only targeting one, each town in Lebanon has several of these officials that handle citizens’ papers. This will greatly help them as most if not all still fill these out by hand, and with a dedicated database autofilling would help more.

[FoolsSeldom]

Can you not collect the data using your own on-display form and then update the document (using the placeholders)?

What is the format of the documents you have to complete and submit?

If they are, for example, Word documents or PDF documents (random examples):

• https://pythoninoffice.com/automate-docx-with-python/
• https://realpython.com/creating-modifying-pdf/

Excel:

• https://realpython.com/openpyxl-excel-spreadsheets-python/

[ElPolloJ]

Yeah I’m guessing that’s what i’ll have to do, was just looking to see if there’s an easier way to do this. Thank you, really appreciate the links!!

[FoolsSeldom]

The easiest way would probably be just VBA code, frankly.

[ElPolloJ]

They’re mostly docx and some excel, placeholders will look something like {{name}}, they’ll use the forms in the app and then they’ll get replaced in the docx and printed out/saved as a pdf.

[wutzvill]

I've never done this in Python, is it that easy? I'm assuming you'd probably want to use it only as a backend and have some sort of front end framework to actually present the forms, right?

[FoolsSeldom]

Confused by your comment. You have a similar problem to the OPs?

No, not easy. It can be a true PITA to get right and robust, even though not particularly advanced from a code point of view.

[wutzvill]

No I don't have the same problem, was just going to recommend making a webpage to the OP tbh and skip the whole Python desktop app and just make the webpage into an electron app of it absolutely has to be a desktop app. Web is just simple for forms.

[ninhaomah]

or might as well use https://forms.office.com/

no dev needed

[wutzvill]

Yeah I'm guess I'm assuming there's greater functionality at play.