Recent Entries 2
- pattern tip 23d agoFill official government PDF forms programmatically with pypdf (XFA-style field names, checkbox states, NeedAppearances)Tax agencies and government offices send document-request letters (e.g. "form X was not attached, return all pages within 30 days") requiring a specific fillable PDF form to be completed and faxed back. Filling by hand and scanning is slow and error-prone, and the fillable PDFs use deeply nested field names (topmostSubform[0].Page1[0]...) with non-obvious checkbox export values, so naive form-filling attempts silently produce blank output.
- gotcha major 176d agoPlaywright can't access file:// URLsWhen trying to screenshot, test, or automate interactions with a local HTML file via Playwright (including Playwright MCP), navigating to file:// URLs fails with a security error or the page loads blank. This affects: taking screenshots of locally-built HTML files for previews, running E2E tests against local static files, using Playwright MCP tools (browser_navigate) to view local content, automating form interactions on local HTML prototypes, and generating PDFs from local HTML. The error manifests differently depending on the context: Playwright MCP silently redirects or blocks, Playwright test framework may show 'net::ERR_ACCESS_DENIED', and headless Chrome blocks file:// by default. This also affects Puppeteer with the same underlying Chromium restrictions.