Is it feasible with PdfBox to generate pdf with form using xml data and get back the form data to server?

[Pramod Chandoria <de...@gmail.com>]

Hello Aspose Pdf,
I am evaluating PDFBox library if it can fit into our requirement. The
discription of use case is as follow

1. On Server: Create a Pdf Document from a xml document. Xml document is not
the specification of pdf doc but representing an artifact. The generated
pdf's data section (say Table) size will vary depending on the content of
xml. The schema of xml is known.
2. On Server: In the generated pdf's table there will be pdf form as well so
for each row of the table, user can provide some input.

3. Client: User is presented such PDF and she/he fills all form value
offline.

4. Client: User is done and now he comes online and want to upload the data
to server.
     Challenge is to upload the data entered into form field on to server.
How can we achieve this without providing any extra utility at client side.
user have all is pdf.

Can we embed java script in pdf so once pdf form is filled and user click
some submit button , java script saves form data into some other file format
which latter can be uploaded to server  ?
Or if server is up then data can be directly send to the server.

Please provide you valuable inputs
Thanks
-|- pchandor

Re: Is it feasible with PdfBox to generate pdf with form using xml data and get back the form data to server?

[Ad...@swmc.com]

pchandor,

For generating forms based on XML, I'd recommend looking into 
iReport/Jasper[1].  I haven't used it to create Acroforms (text fields 
where the user can enter data), so I don't know if it can currently do 
this.  If you just have one document that you need to create, you could 
probably write your own template class for this doc which will take in the 
XML and output the PDF using PDFBox.

I believe Acroform is what you want for users to be able enter data using 
Adobe Reader.  I haven't personally used this, but I know PDFBox has at 
least some support for it from what I've seen on the mailing lists.  You 
can also read about the technical specs in the later Adobe PDF 
specifications (version 1.9 if I recall correctly).

Once they submit the PDF to you, I think it'll be fairly easy to read the 
data they entered.  If you don't want them to have to go to the website 
and upload the file, I know PDF supports javascript and opening URLs.  So 
at a minimum you could dynamically generate a URL with GET vars and open 
that to get the data to the server.

In any case, the PDF specification from Adobe is bound to be very helpful. 
 Once you understand how PDFs are laid out, everything becomes 
tremendously easier no matter which library you are using.

[1] http://jasperforge.org/projects/ireport

---- 
Thanks,
Adam





From:
Pramod Chandoria <de...@gmail.com>
To:
users@pdfbox.apache.org
Date:
06/09/2010 23:26
Subject:
Is it feasible with PdfBox to generate pdf with form using xml data and 
get back the form data to server?



Hello Aspose Pdf,
I am evaluating PDFBox library if it can fit into our requirement. The
discription of use case is as follow

1. On Server: Create a Pdf Document from a xml document. Xml document is 
not
the specification of pdf doc but representing an artifact. The generated
pdf's data section (say Table) size will vary depending on the content of
xml. The schema of xml is known.
2. On Server: In the generated pdf's table there will be pdf form as well 
so
for each row of the table, user can provide some input.

3. Client: User is presented such PDF and she/he fills all form value
offline.

4. Client: User is done and now he comes online and want to upload the 
data
to server.
     Challenge is to upload the data entered into form field on to server.
How can we achieve this without providing any extra utility at client 
side.
user have all is pdf.

Can we embed java script in pdf so once pdf form is filled and user click
some submit button , java script saves form data into some other file 
format
which latter can be uploaded to server  ?
Or if server is up then data can be directly send to the server.

Please provide you valuable inputs
Thanks
-|- pchandor



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