filling out a pdf form with html javascript ?

genki · Joined: 21 May 2007 Posts: 3

Hi all,

I am building a web application in VB ASP.Net2.0 and Javascript, and have it mostly working. I would like to be able to add functionality so that I can load up a pdf file from the application and auto-complete a few fields (name, phone number etc), returening a read-only pdf file. The pdf file I want to produce is mostly static with only a handful of fields I would want completing by the code. I already have the form built in Adobe Designer.

What I can't figure out is how to transfer the data from the web app into the pdf form.

- can I get the html javascript to pass a string to the pdf file so the pdf javascript can decode it ?

- can I parse together an xml string from html javascript and get the form completed from that ?

- if I can't do it from js, can I do it from asp ?

Have done a lot of googling to try to find this out, but no luck. I know that pdf files can support js, but documentation is, to say the least, limited.

Cheers, appreciate your help

genki · Joined: 21 May 2007 Posts: 3

don't worry, I sussed it Smile

generalchaos316 · 100+ Club Joined: 16 Mar 2007 Posts: 101

I'd be interested to see what you found out about this...and or any references that you used. I have been trying to do a similar thing but settled on a plain HTML option. Confused

genki · Joined: 21 May 2007 Posts: 3

I was using the query string - parsing up the data in html javascript, eg var win = window.open("pdffile.pdf?data1|data2|data3") and then getting the pdf javascript to read its url, check it's in the right format, unparse it (var arr=event.target.URL.split("|")) and apply the results to the fields.

However, I have a problem, the resulting file looks really nice, but you can't save it with the data in it, the fields are blanked out on the save Sad

Think I might have to try a server-side solution.

The guys here http://forum.planetpdf.com/webboard/wbpx.dll/~planetpdfforum/read?160307,34 have been really helpful