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

Dynamic Form Field Generation

When spawning templates, you may specify whether the form fields are renamed on the

new page or retain the same names as those specified in the template. This is done through

parameter. If you set the parameter’s value to

on each spawned page have unique names, and values entered into any of those fields do

not affect values in their counterparts on other pages. This would be useful, for example, in

forms containing expense report items. If you set the parameter’s value to

fields on each spawned page have the same name as their counterparts on all the other

spawned pages. This might be useful if you would like, for example, to duplicate a button or

display the date on every page, since entering it once results in its duplication throughout

all the spawned pages.

and the field name on the template is

. If the template is named

and is spawned onto page 4, the new

corresponding field name is

P.4.myTemplate.myField

. The page number embedded

in the new field guarantees its uniqueness.

Dynamic Page Generation

When templates are used to spawn new pages, those pages contain an identical set of form

fields to those defined in the template. Depending on the parameters used, this process

may result in a size inflation problem. This is because there are two ways to specify page

generation: one option is to repeatedly spawn the same page which results in the

objects (external graphics objects), and the other is to generate

objects, which only requires that those objects be

parameter is used to specify the zero-based index of the page number used to

create the page. If the

, the new page overlays onto the

page number specified in the

the new page is inserted as a new page before the specified page. To append a page at the

end of the document, set the

value to false and the

total number of pages in the document.

Acrobat JavaScript Scripting Guide