Is it possible to access a html based web service from a pdf form?

[lasersocks2]

I was wondering if it is possible to send a query from livecycle to web service and parse the return data.

An quick example of what I am thinking is querying a database like wolfram alpha using their html query.

It is in the format http://api.wolframalpha.com/v2/query?input=pi&appid=XXXX. where "pi" is the query and XXXX is the specific user id

The website then returns a xml file.

Is there anyway to send out that html with any query from a text field and process the response?

Thanks!

[Victoria_Agafon]

FormCalc has get post and put methods, maybe they'll help you:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/livecycle/9.0/FormCalc.pdf look at page 79

An example from the book:

Get("http://www.myweb.com/data/mydata.xml") XML data taken from the specified file.

Get("ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/GPL") The contents of the GNU Public License.

Get("http://intranet?sql=SELECT+*+FROM+projects+FOR+XML+AUTO,+ELEMENTS") The results of an SQL query to the specified website.

[_Bruce_Robertson · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Naseko is right in using the formcalc get function, and I use this for accessing information from google calendar, you can also call the formcalc get function from JavaScript as described here http://blogs.adobe.com/formfeed/2009/02/calling_formcalc_functions_fro.html.

The main problem I have is with the yellow message bar message and popup saying do you want to allow access to api.wolframalpha.com (or whatever).  I think you can get around this by certifing the form, but I don't have access to the servre products to do that.

Anyway, if it helps have a look at https://workspaces.acrobat.com/?d=vFcW-9OVSm*BdV6GyFfUIg you will need to modify the button click code to specify your own appid but the code is simple enough;

var response = FormCalc.Function.Get("http://api.wolframalpha.com/v2/query?appid=<<appid>>&input=capital%20of%20australia");

response = response.replace(/^<\?xml\s+version\s*=\s*(["'])[^\1]+\1[^?]*\?>/, "");

var responseNode = xfa.datasets.createNode("dataGroup", "response");

responseNode.loadXML(response, false, false);

var answer = responseNode.resolveNode("queryresult.pod.(title.value=='Result')").subpod.plaintext.value;

console.println(answer);

So this code sends a query "capital of australia" and gets a response "Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia"

Replace <<appid>> with your appid and look at the linked sample to see how FormCalc.Function.Get works.

Also, expect Designer to crash a few times while getting it to work.

Hope this helps,

Bruce

[lasersocks2]

Thanks!

It took some manipulating but it ended up working.