Merging PDF Forms

[Andrew_Tillinghast]

Using Coldfusion 9 we're attempting to create a web application for serving user created PDF forms.

The intent is that a staff member would create a PDF form with content and fields formatted per the department preferences and then upload the form via a web interface after which the application would display the form to end users.

Over all the system is progressing well, we have database tables to store the submitted data and we're using http://pdfobject.com/ to display the forms.

The problem that has us stuck, to make sure the data stores into the database stores correctly into the database we need a field in the PDF form the stores a unique GUID and we need to be sure the form has a submit button with the correct URL and submit type. To facilitate the correct PDF form content we want the application design to allow the Staff members to upload their form without a submit button at all.

We've created a PDF form that contains the GUID field/submit button with the correct properties (Technically we've found we only need the submit button and we can set the value of the button to GUID). We've tried to merge the two forms with CFDocument, CFPDF, CFPDFForms and CFSaveContent, no matter which of these techniques we try we can't create a final form with the new submit button on the same page as the original form.

Can anyone suggest a method that would put the submit button on the same page as the uploaded form? Or will we have to provide the staff with an example PDF form they can copy the submit button from?

[insuractive]

Take a look at iText. its a free java library that will be able to accomplish all of those things.  There is a version of iText that ships with CF, but I'm not sure if its a full version of if its crippled.