Acrobat JavaScript, Introduction to Acrobat JavaScript, Acrobat JavaScript Scripting Guide

Using Acrobat JavaScript in Forms

Setting the Hierarchy of Form Fields

The hierarchy of form fields is determined according to a naming strategy that uses "dot"

notation. For example, suppose you have 4 radio buttons that all belong to the same group.

The group could be named

. The 4 radio buttons would then be named

. The convenience of this

naming system becomes most apparent when you decide that all members of the group

should have the same property characteristics. For example, to set the glyph style of all 4

radio buttons, you can do this with one line of code as shown below:

var f = this.getField("myGroup");

f.style = style.ch; // glyph style for all radio buttons

This notation is certainly more convenient than typing in 4 nearly identical lines of code.

Suppose that you have 3 different groups, each of which has several radio buttons. You can

extend the hierarchical naming to this situation as well. Suppose that you would like to be

able to assign common property values to all 3 groups. To do this, you could create a parent

name for all the groups, such as

. The 3 groups would be named

. Suppose the first group,

, has 2 radio buttons in it.

. To set the glyph style for all 3 groups

of radio buttons, you can do this, again, with just a single line of code as shown below:

var f = this.getField("mySet");

f.style = style.ch; // glyph style for all 3 groups

You can also differentiate the groups within the hierarchy. Suppose you would like to

designate a yellow background color for the third set. You could do so with the following

var f = this.getField("mySet.2");

f.fillColor = color.yellow; // affects only the 3rd group

Creating Forms From Scratch

Positioning Form Form Fields

Remember that form field positioning takes place in

of a page is located at the bottom left corner. This differs from

that you occasionally perform transformations.

For example, suppose that you use the

panel to obtain the coordinates of a given

method to obtain the coordinates in Rotated

User Space for the page, and then subtract the Info Space y-coordinates from the page

height provided by the

Acrobat JavaScript Scripting Guide