PDF Manipulation was Design Question

[Bob Sneidar]

If you are talking about form data, there IS a way to configure a PDF so that it reads a data file contains just form data and populates with the new data. This works with Mac and Windows, and I assume with Linux, but the caveat is that the PDF has to be configured to do this first.

The format is not difficult to grok. I use it in my Forms Generator app extensively to fill blank forms with data from an SQL server. I have handlers for reading and creating these files (they end in .fdf). It get’s a little more difficult to understand when dealing with things like check boxes and radio buttons, and especially tables. For instance the two default values for a checkbox (unless you modify the checkbox object in the PDF) is false and yes.

My application has an interface for importing a pre-existing fillable form (preconfigured to read the pdf file of course), creating relationships between the database columns and the form objects, and saving those relationships along with the binary data to recreate the pdf on demand, in the SQL database.

Is that what you need?

Bob S


On Nov 18, 2020, at 12:02 PM, Bob Sneidar via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com<mailto:use-livecode at lists.runrev.com>> wrote:

At my work we have a, frankly stupid, situation that could be made so
much easier if we had software do a simple function. All that is needed
is that a PDF file that comes to me gets some of its text changed and
the changes are according to a specific pattern.