You were doing fine up to this statement:
>Second, since this is a static XFA form, I can use the normal
AcroForms APIs in IText:
>
This won't work! As soon as the user opens the PDF in Acrobat/
Reader, the (unmodified) XFA data will be used to RECREATE the
AcroForm - thus throwing away all the work on did on the server.
INSTEAD, you need to forget about the fact that there is an AcroForm
there - and instead read out the XFA data sets grammar, modify it
using standard XML techniques, and then put it back (as part of the
appended PDF pieces). That will work fine.
And if you go this route - you can do your rich text fields as well.
Leonard
On Jun 10, 2008, at 11:29 AM, Demling, Peter wrote:
(First off, thank you for the very useful API, book and forum).
I've been charged with providing a proof-of-concept as soon as I can
for servlets to perform the following tasks using XFA forms. I'm
pushing hard for us to use iText, so I've read every message and FAQ
posted in the past year that mention XFA. I think I've designed it
correctly, but since this touches on some tricky forms issues
(reader-enabling, etc), could someone reply if you they see a flawed
assumption about iText functionality? My servlets will:
Open a static XFA Form created in AcrobatPro 8.1 (i.e. with
LiveCycle Designer) with reader-saving rights enabled, that has no
data yet (call it a 'template' if you'd like).
Populate this template's Form fields with data values (making no
direct changes to the pdf itself); save it as a new pdf, and
download this editable/savable/filled-in pdf to the user (user will
then edit and save offline in Reader).
In a second servlet, upload this user-updated XFA form, and read in
the new Form field values.
As I understand it, creating a filled-in form in this way will not
break the reader-enabled saving in the new pdf, since all I'm doing
is setting Form field values and saving a pre-filled copy like
"questions.forms.FillEnabledForm" does (side note: I remain in
agreement with the EULA regarding reader-enabling since I have less
than 500 users).
Second, since this is a static XFA form, I can use the normal
AcroForms APIs in IText: I don't ever have to read or write to the
XFA structure itself, and the iText code for this purpose will be
exactly the same (opening template, setting form data, saving
editable copy, reading in updated form).
Last, even though we would ideally like some XFA Form fields to be
of type "richText" (to allow users to do things like bold,
underline, etc), it is not possible to simply set the value of such
a Form field with XHTML content via iText (I would need to directly
modify the pdf outside of the form fields, which would break the
reader-enabling). I can however use '\n' and '\t' to insert line
breaks and tabs in a plain text field (and I could even create
bulleted lists with creative use of '\n', '\t' and dashes/numbers if
I wanted to).
Thanks for any feedback! The docs are great; the only thing I
couldn't determine is if it would be less of a headache to just
create an acroForm in AcrobatPro 8.1 (which uses LiveCycle Designer)
instead of XFA. I don't even know if this is possible; but if the
iText code is exactly the same for the above-stated purposes, then
I'm assuming it doesn't matter anyway.
Regards,
-Peter Demling
M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory
Lexington, MA
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