Document Merge Service

A document template merge service providing an API to manage templates and merge them with given data. It can also be used to convert Docx files to PDF.

Installation

Requirements

• docker
• docker-compose

After installing and configuring those, download docker-compose.yml and run the following command:

docker-compose up -d

You can now access the api at http://localhost:8000/api/v1/ which includes a browsable api.

Workaround LibreOffice lockup

The workaround has a setting called ISOLATE_UNOCONV, it is only enabled in the development environment. If ISOLATE_UNOCONV is enabled the container needs CAP_SYS_ADMIN. See docker-compose.override.yml.

cap_add:
  - CAP_SYS_ADMIN
security_opt:
  - apparmor:unconfined
environment:
  - ISOLATE_UNOCONV=true

Sysctl caveat

Depending on your system configuration (e.g. on Ubuntu versions >= 23.10), you might run into the following error (because unprivileged user namespaces are restricted by default):

unoconv failed with returncode: 1 stderr: b'unshare: write failed /proc/self/uid_map: Operation not permitted

To work around this you can set the following sysctl parameters to allow unprivileged user namespaces.

Create the following file /etc/sysctl.d/99-userns.conf

kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1
user.max_user_namespaces=28633
kernel.apparmor_restrict_unprivileged_userns=0

And apply with sudo sysctl -p (additionally reboot, and/or recreate the docker container).

Getting started

Uploading templates

Upload templates using the following:

curl --form template=@docx-template.docx --form name="Test Template" --form engine=docx-template http://localhost:8000/api/v1/template/

Merging a template

After uploading successfully, you can merge a template with the following call:

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" --data '{"data": {"test": "Test Input"}}' http://localhost:8000/api/v1/template/test-template/merge/ > output.docx

Converting a template

To convert a standalone Docx file the following call can be used:

curl -X POST --form file=@my-test-file.docx --form target_format="pdf" http://localhost:8000/api/v1/convert > example.pdf

Further reading

• Configuration - Further configuration and how to do a production setup
• Usage - How to use the DMS and it's features
• Contributing - Look here to see how to start with your first contribution. Contributions are welcome!

License

Code released under the GPL-3.0-or-later license.