Question

PDF Form HTTP Submit in Adobe Reader

Asked by: Tingathewinga

I have some PDF forms i wish to distribute and to make my lfe easier i want to collect the responses via an HTTP Submit button on the page.

This in it's self is no problem and took about 10 minutes to make, it works fine in Acrobat Pro, but i ran into a problem in Adobe Reader.

This seems to be an old problem since i am finding people asking about it going back years, adobe reader keeps returning "Cannot handle content type: text/html;"  this is because it can't dispay a webpage.

Suggested solutions i have found on teh net are as follows:

Having IE open will cause a new window to spawn and the error won't occur, but i can't guarantee IE will be open.

Return a PDF as the response is another common solution which i have tried with the following:
<code>
header('Content-type: application/pdf');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="/thankyou.pdf"');
</code>
this works in a browser but not in adobe reader

Return a status code which tells it not to expect any data
<code>
header('Status: 204 No Content');
</code>
This still produces the same error

I have tried sending back some hand wrtten FDF but that is still producing the same error.

So in short regardless of the headers i specify it is seeing it as "text/html".

All i really want is for the error to go away, the ultimate solution would be to cause a pop-up message where i can give some feedback.

If anyone could give a working example of some code that accepts posted data from a pdf and sends a response that doesn't error in adobe reader (only looking to support ver 7+) it would be greatly appreciated.

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Asked On
2009-08-27 at 07:30:45ID24686742
Tags

PDF

,

Acrobat

,

Form

,

php

Topics

Adobe Acrobat

,

Scripting Languages

,

PHP and Databases

Participating Experts
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Comments
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Answers

 

by: TingathewingaPosted on 2009-08-27 at 07:46:55ID: 25198818

Sorry i forgot i was submitting it to a PHP script which i also thought was going to take 10 minutes to write, and although i have no spent so much time on it i have probably lost the tme saving i thought this was going to give me, I now just wan to solve this because it really should bo so much easier than it is proving to be.

I also found this old EE link, but the solution links to a dead artice on the adobe forum

http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Miscellaneous/Q_22473370.html?sfQueryTermInfo=1+html+reader+text

 

by: mohan_sekarPosted on 2009-08-27 at 10:52:59ID: 25200914

How are you submitting your form? -> Did you add a button and set it's action to 'submit form'?

 

by: j-kPosted on 2009-08-27 at 10:55:43ID: 25200933

Are you hosting the PDF on a Linux server?

 

by: j-kPosted on 2009-08-27 at 10:58:36ID: 25200952

If you are, use a redirect that will only allow IE to access the file. If some one trys to open the file other wise display a message that tells them the file will only open in IE.

 

by: TingathewingaPosted on 2009-08-27 at 14:24:01ID: 25202867

Hi all

Just replying to the questions.

It is an HTTP Submit button, this sends the data back in an HTTP POST to the specifies URL

I don't want to limit the way the PDF is distributed, It could be email, website, or sitting on a windows share.

The person just needs to be able to double click it and use it.  The only limitation i'm happy with is nothing older than reader 7.

 

by: TingathewingaPosted on 2009-08-29 at 05:25:37ID: 25213817

Hi all

Just tried something different, i'm finding heaps of people saying just send a pdf back as the response to adobe reader (but nothign giving an example of how to do this).

So did with the following, saving the result gives me a working PDF file so i know it is a valid byte string i'm returning, but adobe reader sill complains that it is text/html

Does anyone know how to get adobe reader to show a PDF returned as the result of a http submit button?

<?php
header('Content-type: application/pdf');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="/thankyou.pdf"');
 
$filename = "thankyou.pdf";
$handle = fopen($filename, "rb");
$contents = fread($handle, filesize($filename));
fclose($handle);
echo $contents;
 
?>

                                              
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by: TingathewingaPosted on 2009-09-05 at 02:09:32ID: 25265424

It was header issue from the web server

 

by: dropherePosted on 2011-09-26 at 08:27:05ID: 36599782

Hi,

I know this thread has been outdated but I am in the exactly same situation now.

What do you mean by 'It was header issue from the web server'?

I set the header to be ' header("Content-type: application/pdf"); '

and it seems like reader takes it as a proper pdf header, but I am failing to generated a success message upon submit.

My error is slightly different, that it reads that Reader cannot open this "file" as it is encoded improperly or simply broken.

Trying to comprehend the error message I think I am sending out a wrong pdf or something..

My ultimate solution would be redirecting to another HTML page, but it turns out that redirecting to a web page only works when the pdf is opened within a webrowser, and I do not want to limit the distribution of the pdf just like you.

Can you direct me to the solution that you had? Thank you.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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