Form Filling

Welcome > Merger > Programming > Working With Acro Forms > Form Filling

Acro Form filed values can be set as they are merged into a new PDF document. This is done through the getForm() property of theMergeDocument class.

The value that is specified needs to match the export value for the form field. Unicode values are fully supported.

This example shows how to set the values on a merged Acro Form.

[Java]
    MergeDocument document = new MergeDocument("[PhysicalPath]/MyDocument.pdf");
    // Set the field values
    document.getForm().getFields().getFormField("TextBox1").setValue("My Text"); // TextBox field
    document.getForm().getFields().getFormField("CheckBox1").setValue("Yes"); // CheckBox field
    document.getForm().getFields().getFormField("ComboBox1").setValue("Item4"); // ComboBox field
    document.getForm().getFields().getFormField("RadioButtom1").setValue("Item2"); // RadioButtom field
    ListBoxField listBox = document.getForm().getFields().getFormField("ListBox1"); // ListBox field
    listBox.setValues(new String[] {"Item1", "Item3", "Item5"});
    // Save the PDF
    document.draw("[PhysicalPath]/MyDocument.pdf");

Marking Acro Form Fields As Read Only

This example shows how to mark form fields as read only so that they can not be modified once they are set.

[Java]
    MergeDocument document = new MergeDocument("[PhysicalPath]/MyDocument.pdf");
    // Set the field values
    document.getForm().getFields().getFormField("TextBox1").setValue("My Text"); // TextBox field
    // Make the form read only
    document.getForm().setReadOnly(true);
    // Save the PDF
    document.draw("[PhysicalPath]/MyDocument.pdf");

Filling Reorganized Acro Form Fields

It is possible to reorganize the Acro Form fields as they are merged into the PDF document. This prevents renaming issues and helps better organize the form field data.

This example shows how to merge two PDF documents containing Acro Form fields and reorganize their names.

[Java]
    MergeDocument document = new MergeDocument("[PhysicalPath]/fw_4.pdf", new MergeOptions(true, "fw_4"));
    document.append("[PhysicalPath]/fw_9.pdf", new MergeOptions(true, "fw_9"));
    // Set the field values
    document.getForm().getFields().getFormField("fw_4.FirstName").setValue("John");
    document.getForm().getFields().getFormField("fw_9.FirstName").setValue("John");
    // Save the PDF
    document.draw("[PhysicalPath]/MyDocument.pdf");

The Acro Form fields in the first document will now have "fw_4." prepended to their name, and the Acro Form fields from the second document will have "fw_9." prepended to their names.

See Also

Working With Acro Forms | MergeOptions Class | Programming with Merger for Java

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