Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of X-quisite
X-quisite

asked on

Advice on FDF and PDF files

Hi,

I need some urgent advice on FDF and PDF files..

I have created VB.NET app with MS SQL back end.

I also have PDF documents that need to be populated with data from app that I have developed.

Looking through EE, I came across the following code:

 Dim sb As New System.Text.StringBuilder
        Dim file As New System.IO.StreamWriter("POneEventQuote2007.fdf")
        Try

            '***Create a replica of the FDF file's contents by creating a string containing all the
            '***information in the FDF file.
            '***vbCr's replace Hex value x0D found when viewing the original FDF File with a hex
            '***viewer.
            sb.Append("%FDF-1.2" & vbCr & "%âãÏÓ" & vbCrLf)
            sb.Append("1 0 obj<</FDF<</F(POneEventQuote2007.pdf)/ID[<e099e1fa40427741839c37afe39f0f67><d9326d3e5b7f764b8c0bb9fa30e73040>]/Fields[<</T(A0)/V(N/A)>><</T(R9)/V(0)>><</T(Z5)/V(REPLACE_NAME\rREPLACE_ADDRESS)>>]>>>>" & vbCr & "endobj" & vbCr & "trailer" & vbCrLf)
            sb.Append("<</Root 1 0 R>>" & vbCrLf)
            sb.Append("%%EOF" & vbCrLf)

            '***Replace the default values with the "real" values
            sb.Replace("REPLACE_NAME", "John Smith")
            sb.Replace("REPLACE_ADDRESS", "London, UK")
            file.WriteLine(sb)
            file.Close()
 Catch ex As Exception
            MessageBox.Show(ex.Message, strAppTitle)
            '***Code to display your error goes here.
        End Try


This allows me to create an FDF file, which when accessed will open the pdf file with the fields populated.

My questions are:
1. Is there a quicker to achieve the above, without going for 3rd party apps? (what if the pdf form has alot of text fields to populate?)
2. What i also want to do is to save the PDF with the data populated from the FDF without having to open the PDF and saving it in Reader. Can this be done in VB.NET?
3. Also on the PDF form, there are some fields (Combo boxes) that trigger some events in Javascript, now these dont show up in the FDF structure, is there anyway around this?

Looking forward to your suggestions,

XQ
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Dimandja
Dimandja
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of X-quisite
X-quisite

ASKER

Thanks for the advice... I was hoping there was another way (i.e. free!) to achieve the above tasks..
looks like I need to 'cough up some dough' :-(