Online PDF Forms Processing without Adobe Life-Cycle ES

are you interested it in doing with php?

There are two different forms technologies built into Acrobat: AcroForms and XFA forms - the latter ones are what the LiveCycle products use. You can create AcroForms and have them submit forms data via a normal HTML forms submission, so anything that you can do with web forms can then also be done with AcroForms.
Do you have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro? I can walk you through a simple sample form.

My preference is to use a SOA based solution because of another project that will eventually link to this one. However, there are budget issues and there may not be enough money for a high end solution. In fact, the more the numbers come in on the RFPs the more it looks like a PHP project.

I can get a copy of Acrobat Pro latter today. I appreciate very much your offer to walk me through a sample form. I will post another comment when I have it installed.

Thanks,

Frank

In a related question, I am receiving information that using PDF for creation is not a good idea and that using a HTML form would be more expedient. Would you comment comment on this, please.

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/26622841/PHP-and-PDFlib.html?anchorAnswerId=34164738#a34164738

Thanks, again.

Frank

You can use either HTML or PDF - what it comes down to is what do you want your form to look like? If you are happy with your form in HTML, then go for it. However, if you already have a paper form (or any other form of existing form), you can convert that to PDF and make it interactive. This is for example what the IRS is doing with their forms.

I see from the other question that you want to create your PDF on the fly - is there any reason for that? Would it be possible to create the form once (e.g. in Acrobat) and then just send down that file whenever somebody wants to add new data to the database?

This is an interesting use case, once a form is filled out it is never updated. If the data changes, a new form is created. All the data within a form is always bound to that iteration (version) of that form. No data is ever updated on a form. In 20+ years of programming I have never come across this use case, except in Document Management Systems where the image is stored and the data may or may not be extracted.

Yes, there is a Word based existing form and my preference would be to convert that to a PDF and use that as the online form like the IRS. But I can't afford to have problems-on-end extracting data because of different versions of the Acrobat Reader. And, of course, I don't have the budget of the IRS to deal with those kind of problems. :-)

Frank

Would you expand on this please, "Would it be possible to create the form once (e.g. in Acrobat) and then just send down that file whenever somebody wants to add new data to the database"?

Do you have access do Adobe Acrobat Pro yet? That's what you would use to create such a form. Once you have Acrobat, let me know which version, and I will show you how to create a form and fill it in, and also how to submit the data to a PHP script.

Thank you! I was pulled off on to another project, but I will have it installed by Monday.

Khkremer, I now have Acrobat Pro X installed.

Thanks,

Frank

Khkremer, I have Acrobat Pro 10.0.0 installed.

Great info, thanks!

I let Acrobat try to detect the fields on my PDF document and it found about 85% of them. However, I don't see them on the form; I can see them in the panel on the right where all the fields are listed, just not on the form itself. Also when I switch to preview mode the fields that it added are not available to fill in. The one I added manually is along with the Submit Button I added. How do I get the fields it detected active on my form?

No, I don't know how to write a PHP script to process my HTML form.

Again, thanks for your assistance!

Frank

Let's first see if we can get the form fields to work correctly, then we can take care of the server part. What server technology do you usually use to create dynamic web pages?

When you click on the field name in the right hand column, do you see anything getting selected on the page? There should be a blue frame around the selected field. Is it possible that the recognized fields are too small, or not where you expect them?

One more thing: In the preview mode, when you select "Highlight Existing Fields", does Acrobat highlight anything that is in an odd location?

I normally use a very high end RAD platform, but because of budget I need to use PHP. I have some experience with it using various CMSs like Joomla and WordPress.

No, I don't see any corresponding blue frame around the selected field in the right hand column for the fields auto detected. I do see the one I created, however.

No, "Highlight Existing Fields" is selected but only the field I added manually shows up. Nothing else in an odd location.

When I select one of the fields near the bottom of the page in the panel on the right, the form in the left pane moves down, like it knows where the corresponding field is at on the form. But again nothing is highlighted. I changed the view to 400% just to see if it made a field smaller than I could see at only 100% but I could still see nothing.

Would you be able to share the form with me - or at least something that looks similar and gives you the same problems?

It just dawned on me, I am using a trial version of Acrobat. Would that cause the problem - auto detected fields not showing up?

This should not be a problem - at least in the past, the trial was a full version with a time limit. I have not had a chance to look at the AX trial version, but I'm pretty sure that they have not changed that.

Fgriffin provided the PDF file in question in a private email because of confidentiality concerns. I took a look and the form fields are there, but they are off the page - outside of the crop box. We don't know why that happened. I ran the form field recognition again with three different versions of Acrobat, and every time the recognized fields were correctly added to the page. It is possible that the reason is the eval version of Acrobat that Fgriffin is using.
Unfortunately at this time I don't have a clean system available to install the eval version, so we don't have a way to confirm that suspicion.

Just to recap: You now know how to add form fields to a PDF file (both manually, and at least in theory also with the "find form fields" function in Acrobat). Do you need more help with the PHP part?

Yes, I believe this answers the scope of this question. I might need help with the PHP part, but what you have provided gives me a good start.

Thanks again, for all your information!


Frank

Great information provided by khkremer