Submit PDF Form as HTML with ColdFusion - Part 1

I saw an interesting question on Raymond Camden's blog about adding a button to a PDF form with ColdFusion 8. I do not know if the asker was looking for a simple email hyperlink or a full fledged button. But the question got me to thinking about other things like: How do you add a button to a PDF form that will submit the form as HTML to a ColdFusion page?

It was not as difficult as I thought. Part of the process is covered in the iText API. The critical part was constructing the ColdFusion page to return a response that Adobe Reader can understand. Otherwise, the cfm script would successfully process the form information, but the end user would not know that. They would see only a cryptic message like "Cannot handle content type: text/html".

Creating the new form

Adding a button to my form, was simple. I used a PdfReader object to read in my source PDF, and PdfStamper to create a copy of the form. Then I created a new button and added a button action. The action is like a javascript onClick event. So when the button is clicked, the pdf form information will be submitted to the given URL as an HTML form.

<cfscript>
 PdfAction = createObject("java", "com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfAction");
buttonAction = PdfAction.createSubmitForm( javacast("string", submitFormDataToURL),
     javacast("null", ""),
     PdfAction.SUBMIT_HTML_FORMAT
 );
</cfscript>
...

That is all there was to adding the form button. When you run the code below, it will create a new PDF file, with a submit button. In Part 2 I will show the ColdFusion code I used to process the form information and save it to a database table.

What you will need to run this example

1. This example requires ColdFusion 8. It should also run under MX7 if you are using a newer version of iText
   



2. A sample PDF Form. Download SimpleRegistrationForm.pdf from the iText site. Place it in the same web directory as your cfm script
   



3. By default, the sample code will submit the form to the URL http://localhost/receivePDFForm.cfm. Just replace this value with the URL of the page you will use to process the form fields. For now it can be an empty .cfm script. I will show the ColdFusion code for this page in Part 2
   

Complete Code

<h1>Submit form as HTML example</h1>

<cfscript>
   savedErrorMessage = "";

   submitFormDataToURL = "http://localhost/receivePDFForm.cfm";
   fullPathToInputFile = ExpandPath("SimpleRegistrationForm.pdf");
   fullPathToOutputFile = ExpandPath("SendFormAsHTML.pdf");

   try {   
       // step 1: read in the source pdf
       reader = createObject("java", "com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfReader").init( fullPathToInputFile );
       // step 2: create an output stream for the destination file
       outStream = createObject("java", "java.io.FileOutputStream").init( fullPathToOutputFile );
       // step 3: open a stamper for generating the new pdf file
       stamper = createObject("java", "com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfStamper").init( reader, outStream );

       // step 4: set the button dimensions
       Rectangle = createObject("java", "com.lowagie.text.Rectangle");
       buttonDimen = Rectangle.init( javacast("float", 200),
               javacast("float", 600),
               javacast("float", 300),
               javacast("float", 650)
           );

       // step 5: create a pushbutton field
       PushbuttonField = createObject("java", "com.lowagie.text.pdf.PushbuttonField");
       newButton = PushbuttonField.init( stamper.getWriter(), buttonDimen, "sendButton" );
       newButton.setText(" Send Form ");
       newButton.setOptions( PushbuttonField.VISIBLE_BUT_DOES_NOT_PRINT );
       Color = createObject("java", "java.awt.Color");
       newButton.setBackgroundColor( Color.LIGHT_GRAY );

       // step 6: create an action that will submit the form data
       PdfAction = createObject("java", "com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfAction");
        buttonAction = PdfAction.createSubmitForm( javacast("string", submitFormDataToURL),
               javacast("null", ""),
               PdfAction.SUBMIT_HTML_FORMAT
           );

       // step 7: add the action to the button, and add the button to the pdf
       field = newButton.getField();
       field.setAction( buttonAction );
       stamper.addAnnotation( field , javacast("int", 1) );
      
       WriteOutput("Done!");
   }
   catch (java.language.Exception de) {
       savedErrorMessage = de;
   }
  
   // step 8: close pdf objects
   if (IsDefined("stamper")) {
       stamper.close();
   }
   if (IsDefined("outStream")) {
       outStream.close();
   }
</cfscript>

<!--- show any errors --->
<cfif len(savedErrorMessage) gt 0>
   Error - unable to create document(s)
   <cfdump var="#savedErrorMessage#">
</cfif>