Flattening

[Lukas Baab]

Hi!

How do I "flatten" a PDF-form (remove the form-field but keep the text of the 
field)?

Jason asked this question already.
(see 
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/pdfbox-users/201009.mbox/%3c4c9a326f.60...@rayman2200.de%3E)
The answer was this:
> a quick way to do this, is to remove the fields from the acrofrom.
> For this you just need to get the document catalog, then the acroform and 
> then remove all fields from this acroform.
> The graphical representation is linked with the annotation and stay in the 
> document.

So I wrote the following code.
I can write some text in the form-field. But I don´t know how to remove the 
form-field.
Any ideas?

Thanks for your help!
Lukas


import java.io.File;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocumentCatalog;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.interactive.form.PDAcroForm;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.interactive.form.PDField;

public class PdfBoxTest
{
  public void test() throws Exception
  {
    PDDocument pdDoc = PDDocument.load(new File("E:\\Form-Test.pdf"));
    PDDocumentCatalog pdCatalog = pdDoc.getDocumentCatalog();
    PDAcroForm acroForm = pdCatalog.getAcroForm();
    if (acroForm == null)
    {
      System.out.println("No form-field --> stop");
      return;
    }

    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    List<PDField> fields = acroForm.getFields();

    // set the text in the form-field <-- does work
    for (PDField field : fields)
    {
      if (field.getFullyQualifiedName().equals("formfield1"))
      {
        field.setValue("Test-String");
      }
    }

    // remove form-field but keep text ???
    // acroForm.getFields().clear(); <-- does not work
    // acroForm.setFields(null); <-- does not work
    // acroForm.setFields(new ArrayList()); <-- does not work
    // ???

    pdDoc.save("E:\\Form-Test-Result.pdf");
    pdDoc.close();
  }
}