I am using PDFbox java api to fill out the values in PDF.
I can fill the textbox values. When I use check() method for checkboxes
as shown How to check a check box in PDF-form using Java PDFBOX api
it set value to true in background but that does not reflect when I open the pdf.
checkbox is still blank without any value.
does anyone know how to fix this issue ?
Related
I'm trying to fill out a form using Select.Pdf .NET package. Although I've successfully filled a couple of forms, there is a one, which I can't fill.
Here is the link - https://www.state.sd.us/eforms/secure/eforms/E1830V2-WCFRI.pdf
When I try to set some textbox text and the save it it just remains blank. Maybe someone has experience in both PDF and using Select.Pdf, so you could help me.
Thanks!
The PDF in question uses a document level JavaScript which calls resetForm();.
That's where the fields are reset to their default values.
Is there a way to determine the text that will actually display in a PDTextField when the PDF prints? If I call setValue and then getValue, it returns all of the text even though it will not all display.
I am trying to fill out a form with a limited size multiline text field that has the notation to attach another page for more details. I would like to limit the text to that which will display and generate the added detail page.
Thanks for indulging a PDFbox newbie.
There is no direct way to find that out as the details of the text layout such as line breaks, padding, line spacing are hidden inside the non public class PlainTextFormatter inside the org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.interactive.formpackage. So you'd need to replicate that code.
PDFBox tries to resemble the calculations done by Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader but the details of such calculations are not part of the PDF specification. So doing your calculation is only valid for a similar layout model. Other form filling applications might have a slightly different layout model and as a result your results will not apply to these.
In addition to that Acrobat (and PDFBox) place text although it might be partially clipped. Look at the results of the AlignmentTest.javaunit test to see what I mean. So one might have a different expectation to what 'fitting' really means.
As I've thought about passing the information about which text fitted back to the calling application anyway I've opened an enhancement request https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PDFBOX-3413 for that.
I'm using pdftk to fill in the form with the generated fdf.
In the PDF form, the form field is configured as a number field with 2 decimal point, and the negative value will be showing with parentheses, for example, -4444 will become (4444.00)
Using any PDF viewers and changing the value on form did make the form display the value correctly with the behaviour explained above (negative value will become value with parentheses)
Tested also with the FDF (by importing to the form), the negative value will be displayed correctly as well.
But when using the pdftk fill-form action, the negative value remains as it is without changing the display, which is still showing -4444 and not (4444.00)
Is anyone experienced this before / has a solution for this?
Update #1
I've also tested Apache PDFBox, it has the same issue :(
And now I'm trying to achieve this by using the PDF's javascript, any clue that this way will works?
Update #2
came across this thread How to refresh Formatting on Non-Calculated field and refresh Calculated fields in Fillable PDF form and so gave it a try with iText as well. However still unable to make it works
Finally, i've found some ways to get the formatting works in the PDF form fields.
Approach #1
Requirements
pdftk
PDF form with javascript
In the PDF, create a "Document Javascript" (see how) and re-assign the form's value to make it dirty as mentioned by Denis in the thread of Update #2. The script could be as simple as below:
var text1 = this.getField('text1');
text1.value = text1.value;
Downside
Javascript will only be triggered when you open the PDF, and if you would like to set the PDF with some ownerPassword to prevent user edit the file, the javascript will just failed because of read-only form fields. Otherwise, imagine you have 100 form fields in the PDF, re-assign each of them is a nightmare.
Approach #2
iText
PDF form
I personally will prefer this approach. The powerful iText already has the API to set the form field and at the same time formatting the field display (see how). The generated PDF is ready to print as well with the correct format.
Downside
Either using the iText API to find out the existing format of the form field, or you will hard code the format in your codes. Require more efforts than using the pdftk.
I'm using a simpler version of ChinKang's #1.
In Tools -> Document Javascripts:
this.calculateNow();
One thing to check is in Tools -> Set field calculation order that any calculations are ordered appropriately.
I then use https://github.com/ccnmtl/fdfgen and pdftk to fill the forms in.
The only gotcha is that you cannot flatten the PDF
I have a simple report that has an image and a textbox within the body (a rectangle). The textbox is set to 'Allow Height to Increase'. The rectangle is set to 'Page Break After'.
Normally this works fine if the contents of the textbox span a few lines. However, when the textbox expands over multiple pages the Page Break is ignored. This only happens when exporting to PDF, yet works as expected in Preview mode.
I'm hoping someone has some insight into this behaviour or can recommend an alternative page structure that will achieve the desired results.
Could you please check the Rectangles property
kept contents together on a single page
in a parent Rectangle object, this will always keep items together where possible.
You could also set page setup settings (margins, gutters, printable page size...) to make sure that they are not affects on exported PDF document.
I'm trying to build a web app to programmatically fill out a PDF form. I am going to configure my form first in Adobe Acrobat, then write a Java app with iText to fill out all the form fields via user input from the web. The base form I need to fill out comes from the US government. They created form fields with extremely large kerning (character spacing) values I need to change. However, there appears to be no way to modify this value in the Acrobat UI.
Does anyone know how to manipulate character spacing on form fields in Acrobat 8.0 for Windows? I could try to use iText to programmatically manipulate the kerning of the original document, but this would be much more tedious.
I believe I figured this out: kerning is called "combing" in acrobat, and each of the form fields have been "combed". The strange thing is this option isn't checked when I view the properties of the form field, but "combing" is the behaviour I was attempting to replicate.