I need to create PDF forms which can be used to take input from the user. They need to contain drop down boxes and text boxes. Please suggest which software or tool will best suit my purpose
You can use IText to edit PDFs and add forms. I saw a really cool demo of their new XFA features (http://lowagie.com/img/summit2012/summit2.pdf)
First of all, software recommendations have meanwhile become off-topic on stack overflow, different stack exchange sites for that have been established since then.
That been said, the question itself is not very exact. There actually are two major form technologies in use in PDFs: AcroForm forms and XFA forms.
AcroForm forms are the original PDF forms technology conclusively specified in the PDF specification ISO 32000-1 (soon to be updated by part 2). This technology only allows static forms, i.e. forms for which the number and positions of fields is already fixed at form definition time. (Actually there is a dynamic sub-feature of this technology, page templates which fields, which allows you to add extra pages with their own fields, but this feature is hardly ever used.)
Creating and filling this kind of forms nowadays is possible using a wide selection of options, desktop applications (Adobe's Acrobat being just one among many), web applications, and general purpose PDF libraries for many languages or platforms. A quick search on google can show you many options...
Displaying this kind of forms is possible on many PDF viewers, editing them visually at least on numerous of them.
XFA (XML Forms Architecture) forms are an alternative forms technology introduced by Adobe which is referenced by the PDF specification (part 1) but which has remained in the Adobe legacy domain. This technology actually uses PDF files merely as transport medium, the XML definitions of XFA forms define forms in a way that is independent of PDF as such. XFA forms can be dynamic (e.g. they can contain tables with variable number of columns), their form elements can grow and move later elements.
Creating and filling this kind of forms is possible using only a small selection of options, foremost Adobe desktop and server products and very few alternative solutions.
Displaying this kind of forms is possible only on Adobe products and a very small selection of other products, and depending on the version of the Adobe PDF viewer a digital signature by a Adobe private key might be required for non-trivial use of such forms.
Support for XFA forms will become deprecated in the ISO 32000-2 specification. Thus, using them in new projects might not be the best idea.
If you are targeting Windows OSes and a commercial tool is an option for you, you can try with Amyuni PDF Creator (there are ActiveX and .Net versions). It will allow you to design your PDF form graphically with a PDF editor application, and you will be able to manipulate the resulting files programmatically. You can also create a new form programmatically if needed.
Usual disclaimer applies.
Related
Any readers besides Adobe Acrobat and Reader that will allow me to fill out and save dynamic XAF form created with LiveCycle?
Dynamic XFA forms are rather proprietary. There may be some viewers available, mainly from the greater SAP environment (which licensed Adobe's technology).
On iDevices, Readdle claims that PDFExpert can handle XFA files, but it may be just static forms.
I am being tasked with creating a Windows application in VB.Net, and one of the requirements is to read data from an MSSQL database, and put in certain values into a PDF form. How can I achieve putting data into a pre-existing PDF file using VB.Net? Also, is it possible to put the PDF file in as a resource instead of calling it externally?
You may be able to take advantage of a 3rd party component like iTextSharp which is a PDF library. It's written in C#, but could be added to your existing solution as a separate project, or compiled and referenced as a library.
This library specifically references the ability to fill in PDF forms and should fit the bill for filling in your pre-existing PDF form programatically.
Docotic.Pdf library can be used for filling PDF forms.
There are samples for the library (C# and VB.NET versions available) that show how to:
Fill existing form
Find control by name
And you might find Write data from a database to PDF blog entry useful in your case, too.
Disclaimer: I am one of the developers of the library.
We have a program which produces PDFs by merging data in FDF files with PDF 'template' and then flattening the form fields to create a final PDF document. Not a problem with CutePDF except for one thing...
One of the templates has a calculated date field that is set by a small bit of Javascript when the PDF is updated. However CutePDF doesn't support Javascript in PDF documents.
I've looked into other products but it's very rare for the feature list to actually mention wether or not the APi supports Javascript calculated fields.
Does anyone know of an API or SDK which allows for merging FDFs into PDFs and also supports Javascript calculated fields?
Results of my own investigation:
CutePDF: Merges FDF to PDF but does not support calculated fields
Debenu Quick PDF Library: Neither FDF nor calculated fields
PDF-XChange Viewer Pro: Supports Javascript but not FDF, very helpful support though
PDFExpress: Supports XFDF (annotations only) but not FDF
Adobe PDF Library (via Datalogics): competely incomprehensible and doesn't support either option
Adobe PDF Library (via Adobe): no answer to enquiry
My company is moving to a new system which has a very poor printing system in place but it does create PDF's on the file system.
My Boss has asked me to create an application to print all the PDF's based on a JOB number.
I've gotten the filesystem search working, I have used the acrobat sdk to open each file and find certain strings to determine which pages go where.
The problem I'm dealing with is that the Acrobat SDK doesn't seem to support choosing printer settings.
My first thought was no big deal I just change the default windows printer and just change the tray so the invoice part and equipment listing go to white paper from tray 1, and the remittance goes to tray 2 on blue paper.
It seems like the printdocument in .net can handle alot of printer settings but I'm not sure if a PDF can be used with a print document.
Looking for any advice or assistance.
Thanks,
Joshua
I found the answer was to use Win32.
Here was the website that helped me get through some of the hurdles:
http://edinkapic.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-to-set-printer-default-paper-bin-in.html
The underlying problem is that PDFs are combination of vector graphics for the text and bitmapped images. It all needs to be rendered into a format the printer understands before being printable.
Ghostscript does this very nicely and if you need to do it from .Net, GhostScript.Net provides an excellent vb.Net interface.
The problem I'm dealing with is that the Acrobat SDK doesn't seem to support choosing printer settings.
You can't use the desktop version of Acrobat for this, since it's not designed for unattended operation and requires a user interface. Also, I believe it violates Adobe's license.
I've been asked to investigate the feasibility of adding watermarks to documents when printed through our application. The documents will consist of word, pdf and cad.
The interface of the application is vb6 with a plethora of vc6 dll's.
I can see a couple of possible solutions:
Convert all documents to PDF, add a watermark and then print.
Find a print driver that will add a watermark to all documents prior to printing and install it and reenable it at runtime if it gets disabled for any reason.
3rd Party suites are possibility (we use Volo View Express for viewing CAD files) but since this application is nearing end-of-life we wouldn't want to spend too much on it.
Has anyone had any experience of the above? Any gotcha's that will bog me down?
Tracker Software has a good set of PDF api's that that will allow you to implement the solution you already have in mind. I've used their Image and PDF libraries quite a bit with a lot of success in both VB6 and .NET. Single user licenses are not expensive (depending on how you look at it I guess), and I've found support to be excellent as well.