Populate PDF form with XML data

Is there a way using this technique to put items (more than one) in dropdown lists ?

George: The project I was working on was a real estate rates sheet. Since the products stay the same, but the rates change on a daily basis, it was necessary to have the fixed layout (PDF - for disclosures and such and nice printing), but the ability to change the rates daily (XML - from our DB). Here is the result in action: http://addisonavenue.com/content/cu/rates/HomeLoanRates.asp



Irritatingly (is that a word?), all of our users had to upgrade to version 7 with all of the issues that entails.



Alexandre: Haven't done this in a while, but I imagine that drop down lists should work as well, assuming the data has been mapped appropriately in Designer.

well yes it works for one item, the value I put in the xml part that correspond to my dropdown list appears in the form, but I am looking for a way to put more than one value. Is there a sub tag name?

Hi there!



I have nearly the same problem like you...



I want to populate a pdf form (created with designer 7)with XML by PHP and open it at client side to print or add other values.



Any idea to do this with PHP instead of ASP ?



Would help me very much...



ciao

Oliver

I have attempted to follow the instructions provided by Floyd and Garth, but all I can manage to do is crash Acrobat Reader 7.0.3 when attempting to view the ASP page. Here are the steps I have followed:



Create a new form in Adobe LiveCycle Designer 7.0.041126.0 (trial version).

Add a text box to the form named TextField1.

Create a simple XML data file; it has one element named "data" which contains one element named "TextField1" which contains the text "sample data".

Use File - New Data Connection to load the sample XML data file.

Use the Binding tab for the text field properties to bind the text field to $record.TextField1.

Save the form as a dynamic PDF form.

Using the same ASP code as posted by Floyd Worley, attempt to serve the PDF file with the text field populated with data.

No luck; Acrobat Reader just crashes with an invalid memory access.



The "result in action" posted by Garth works just fine in my browser. I attempted to serve his PDF off my server populated with data (just as a test) and it worked, so this leads me to suspect the problem is with my PDF file, not the ASP page. Could anyone supply me with a simple, *working*, editable PDF form that I could open in LiveCycle Designer to see if there's something I'm doing wrong? I can be reached at dosolkowski[at]buffalocomputergraphics.com. Thanks.

Hi David,

When you open up the form in acrobat reader, did you try to export the data in the form as an XDP file (can only be done from Profesionnal) and then opening this XDP file (it should launch the corresponding PDF file merged with the data in the XDP file). If that works and your ASP test doesn't, then your problem is in the ASP part. But beware of livecycle designer, when you get into it, get ready to struggle to tons of problems and bugs.

Alexandre,



I only have access to Acrobat Professional 6.0, which doesn't like even the "6.0-compatible" static PDF version of the form, and also cannot save data to XDP format. It only supports FDF or XFDF. However, the XFDF file seems to work quite nicely. Is there any reason why I could not simply generate an XFDF file programmatically to populate the form fields?

Actually FDF is to Acrobat forms what XDP is to Livecycle Designer's forms. It is not the same technology. I've already tried using FDF Toolkit with a form made with livecycle designer and it doesn't work.

You can download an evaluation version of Profesionnal 7 I think.

This servlet should populate the fields in a designer form "DOS1.pdf (1 mainform named "f", 2 subforms named "t1 and t2" , 3 textfields)<br /><br />If you request the Servlet URL the PDF is shown, but the fields are not populated with data.<br /><br />Has someone an idea, why the data are not filled in?<br /><br />package PDFXmlData;<br /><br />import java.io.*;<br />import javax.servlet.*;<br />import javax.servlet.http.*;<br />import java.util.*;<br /><br />/** merge Acrobat Designer Docoment with <br /> * xml Data file<br /> */<br /><br />public class Merge extends HttpServlet {<br /> public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,<br /> HttpServletResponse response)<br /> throws ServletException, IOException {<br /> response.setContentType("application/vnd.adobe.xdp+xml");<br /> ServletOutputStream out = response.getOutputStream();<br /> //PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();<br /> out.print("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding='UTF-8'?>");<br /> out.print("<?xfa generator=\"AdobeDesigner_V7.0\" APIVersion=\"2.2.4333.0\"?>");<br /> out.print("<xdp:xdp xmlns:xdp=\"http://ns.adobe.com/xdp/\">");<br /> out.print("<xfa:datasets xmlns:xfa=\"http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-data/1.0/\">");<br /> out.print("<xfa:data xfa:dataNode=\"dataGroup\">");<br /> out.print("<f>");<br /> out.print("<t1>");<br /> out.print("<Textfeld1>Hallo</Textfeld1>");<br /> out.print("<Textfeld2>Hallo</Textfeld2>");<br /> out.print("</t1>");<br /> out.print("<t2>");<br /> out.print("<Textfeld3>Hallo</Textfeld3>");<br /> out.print("</t2>");<br /> out.print("</f>");<br /> out.print("</xfa:data>");<br /> out.print("</xfa:datasets>");<br /> out.print("<pdf href=\"http://localhost:8080/ADesigner/DOS1.pdf\" xmlns=\"http://ns.adobe.com/xdp/pdf/\" />");<br /> out.print("<xfdf xmlns=\"http://ns.adobe.com/xfdf/\" xml:space=\"preserve\">");<br /> out.print("<annots/>");<br /> out.print("</xfdf>");<br /> out.print("</xdp:xdp>");<br /> //out.flush();<br /> }<br /><br /> public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,<br /> HttpServletResponse response)<br /> throws ServletException, IOException {<br /> doGet(request, response);<br /> }<br />}<br /><br />*****<br />XML-Data File:<br /><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><br /><f<br />><t1<br />><Textfeld1<br />>feld 1</Textfeld1<br />><Textfeld2<br />>feld 2</Textfeld2<br />></t1<br />><t2<br />><Textfeld3<br />>feld 3</Textfeld3<br />></t2<br />></f<br />>

I looked at the problem one more time and found the error. If I omit then annot-Tag then the data are populated in the form.



In the next step I rewrote the servlet, so that you can name the Datafile as Url Parameter and the servlet sends form an data back to the client. Notice, the name of the pdf is part of the xdp.



package PDFXmlData;



import java.io.*;

import javax.servlet.*;

import javax.servlet.http.*;

import java.util.*;



/** merge Acrobat Designer Document with

* xml Data file

*/



public class Merge extends HttpServlet {

public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,

HttpServletResponse response)

throws ServletException, IOException {

response.setContentType("application/vnd.adobe.xdp+xml");



String xmlFileLocation = request.getParameter("xmlFile");

if ( xmlFileLocation == null) {

// Error handling ...

return;

};



String file = getServletContext().getRealPath(xmlFileLocation);

try {

BufferedInputStream in =

new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(file));

ByteArrayOutputStream byteStream =

new ByteArrayOutputStream(512);

int nRead;



while ((nRead = in.read()) != -1) {

byteStream.write(nRead);

}

in.close();



response.setContentLength(byteStream.size());

byteStream.writeTo(response.getOutputStream());

}

catch(IOException ioEx) {

}

}



public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,

HttpServletResponse response)

throws ServletException, IOException {

doGet(request, response);

}

}