Using Acrobat JavaScript in Forms
Filling in PDF Forms
6
Importing and Exporting Form Data
Form data can be exported to a separate file, which can then be sent using email or over
the Web. When doing this, save either to Forms Data Format (FDF) or XML-based FDF
(XFDF). This creates an export file much smaller than the original PDF file.
When importing XFDF data, you will need an XML parser or library to read the XFDF data.
Note that Acrobat forms support the FDF, XFDF, tab-delimited text, and XML formats, and
that XML forms support XML and XDP formats.
Saving Form Data as XML or XML Data Package (XDP)
To save your form data in XML format, invoke the
doc
object’s
saveAs
method using the
conversion ID for XML, as shown in the code below:
this.saveAs("myDoc.xml", "com.adobe.acrobat.xml-1-00");
To take advantage of XFA functionality, you may save your forms in the XML Data Package
format (XDP). This simply requires the usage of the conversion ID for XDP, as shown in the
code below:
this.saveAs("myDoc.xml", "com.adobe.acrobat.xdp");
Emailing Completed Forms
To email a completed form in FDF format, invoke the
doc
object’s
mailForm
method,
which exports the data to FDF and sends it via email.
To make an interactive email session, pass
true
to the first parameter, which specifies
whether a user interface should be used, as shown in the code below:
this.mailForm(true);
To send the exported FDF data automatically, pass
false
to the first parameter, and
specify the
cTO
,
cCc
,
cBcc
,
cSubject
, and
cMsg
fields (all of which are optional), as
shown in the code below:
this.mailForm(false, "recipient@adobe.com");
Global Submit
Suppose you have a document that contains multiple attachments, from which you would
like to compile information for submission to a server in XML format. You can create a
Global Submit
button whose
MouseUp
action contains a script that collects the data from
each of the attachments and creates a unified collection in XML format.
To do this, you will need to invoke the
doc
object’s
openDataObject
method in order to
open the attachments, followed by its
submitForm
method to upload the combined XML
data to the server.
Acrobat JavaScript Scripting Guide
115