Add new AcroForm field to a PDF - pdf

Question

I have used iText to fill data into existing AcroForm fields in a PDF.
I am now looking for a solution to add new AcroForm fields to a PDF. Is this possible with iText? If so, how can I do this?

Answer 1

This is documented in the official documentation, more specifically in the SubmitForm example. When using a tool such as iText, you should read the official documentation first ;-)
Anyway, I've written you a simple example called AddField. It adds a button field at a specific position defined by new Rectangle(36, 700, 72, 730).
public void manipulatePdf(String src, String dest) throws DocumentException, IOException {
PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(src);
PdfStamper stamper = new PdfStamper(reader, new FileOutputStream(dest));
PushbuttonField button = new PushbuttonField(
stamper.getWriter(), new Rectangle(36, 700, 72, 730), "post");
button.setText("POST");
button.setBackgroundColor(new GrayColor(0.7f));
button.setVisibility(PushbuttonField.VISIBLE_BUT_DOES_NOT_PRINT);
PdfFormField submit = button.getField();
submit.setAction(PdfAction.createSubmitForm(
"http://itextpdf.com:8180/book/request", null,
PdfAction.SUBMIT_HTML_FORMAT | PdfAction.SUBMIT_COORDINATES));
stamper.addAnnotation(submit, 1);
stamper.close();
}
}
As you can see, you need to create a PdfFormField object (using helper classes such as PushbuttonField, TextField,...) and then use PdfStamper's addAnnotation() method to add the field to a specific page.