The ability to programmatically access and manipulate PDF forms from within ColdFusion has been requested since, well, since we first demonstrated PDF generation abilities in ColdFusion MX 7. At CFUNITED a few weeks ago, Jason Delmore (ColdFusion Product Manager) demonstrated a planned ColdFusion “Scorpio” tag named
Scorpio is scheduled to be released in 2007. So what to do if you need PDF form support in ColdFusion right now? Well, here’s a solution:
Adobe has a Java API named XPAAJ (which stands for XML/PDF Access API for Java). The API can be used to:
- Extract and insert PDF form field data.
- Convert PDF documents to XDP format.
- Access PDF metadata and file attachments.
- Add, replace, and delete embedded data objects, file attachments, and annotations.
- Obtain PDF file properties.
- … and more.
Until a few days ago the XPAAJ license restricted use of the API to customers with licensed copies of LiveCycle servers. But that license has been updated to include other Adobe servers, including ColdFusion. As such, if you have a licensed copy of ColdFusion you may register and download XPAAJ and use it with ColdFusion.
Of course, using XPAAJ from within CFML code requires writing ColdFusion Java code. And so, to make life easier for us CFers, I wrote a Custom tag named
Extracting PDF form field values is just as easy:
To use
Enjoy!
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