Merge data and flaten a PDF form.

[ilssac]

I am working for the first time on using ColdFusion to populate PDF forms.

I have a simple PDF form I created with my Acrobat 9 Pro tool.  Using the following code, pretty much straight from the documentation, I can easily populate the fields in the PDF with data and save a new PDF file with that data.

<cfpdfform 
    source="#getDirectoryFromPath(getCurrentTemplatePath())#QP-ExpiringLetter.pdf"
    destination="#getDirectoryFromPath(getCurrentTemplatePath())#test.pdf"
    action="populate">
    <cfpdfformparam name="bus_name" value="123 PEST CONTROL">
    <cfpdfformparam name="bus_address" value="1234 MAIN STREET">
    <cfpdfformparam name="bus_city_state_zip" value="HOMETOWN, CA  98765">
</cfpdfform>

But the file is still a "Form" file with the fields editable.  I do not want this.  I want a static PDF file with the fields filled in with the data I provided.  Looking at the documentation, it seems the <CFPDF...> tag has functionality to flatten such form files and do what I want.  What I can not find documentation for, or guess at, is HOW to combine these two tags.  I know I could work with a PDF variable in the <CFPDF...> tag, but I see no way to capture the output of the <CFPDFFORM...> tag into such a variable, I can only send the output to the browser or a file.

Is that the only way to do this?  Send the output to a file, then read that file with the <CFPDF...> tag to flatten it to another file?  That seems a bit IO overhead heavy for what I feel should be able to be done in memory with just one file write.

TIA

Ian

[Jochem van Dieten]

I thibk the overhead isn't too bad with the memory filesystem. But you could also use DDX directly.

[ilssac]

Ok, so now I just need to ALSO learn how to use a memory file system AND|OR DDX.  Two other features of which I am aware, but have never used before.  Off to the documentation I go again.

[ilssac]

Well, it looks like RAM disk is out.  Apparently it is not supported in the <cfpdfform...> and|or <cfpdf...> tags.  When I tried, I was getting "file not found" errors.  Then I see in the documentation that these tags are not listed in the supported tags.

Using in-memory files in tags

The following tags are supported for in-memory files:

• cfcontent

• cfdocument

• cfdump

• cfexchange

• cfexecute

• cffeed

• cfhttp

• cfftp

• cfimage

• cfloop

• cfpresentation

• cfprint

• cfreport

• cfzip

I guess I am off to see how difficult this will be to do with DDX.

[ilssac]

It looks like I am back to square one.

DDX is part of the Life Cycle tool set.  As Far As I know, I am not working with Life Cycle here.

cfpdfform

Description

Manipulates existing forms created in Adobe® Acrobat® and Adobe® LiveCycle® Designer

I created my sample form with Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Version 9.4.4.  Does that mean I have an Acrobat or a LiveCycle form?

ColdFusion supports two types of interactive forms: forms created in Adobe Acrobat 6.0 or earlier, and forms created in Adobe LiveCycle. In Adobe Acrobat Professional and Standard 7.0, Adobe introduced Adobe® LiveCycle® Designer for creating PDF forms.

And if I do have a LiveCycle form, what or how do I get a DDX version of it?

[Dave Watts]

You can use DDX commands from CF with any PDF. DDX is a scripting language used by LiveCycle Assembler, which is a LiveCycle server component. CF includes a subset of LiveCycle Assembler.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/coldfusion/articles/ddx_pdf.html

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software

http://www.figleaf.com/

http://training.figleaf.com/

[Andrew_Tillinghast]

With CFPDFForm there is an undocumented attribute name which you can use instead of destination, after that you can use the CFPDF with that name as the source before writing the flattened file out as a destination.