Mapping XML data to a PDF form

Question

Hello I have an application that maps XML data to a .dot template using C#. I need to replace the .dot template by PDF forms. How can I map the data to a PDF form using XML? Thank you.

Nattudurai Eswaramurthy · Answer

HI Plz go though the following link http://livedocs.adobe.com/coldfusion/8/htmldocs/help.html?content=formsPDF_03.html Some applications submit PDF form data in an XML data file. For example the e-mail submit option in forms created in LiveCycle generates an XML data file and delivers it as an attachment to the specified e-mail address. This is an efficient way to transmit and archive data because XML data files are smaller than PDF files. However XML files are not user-friendly: to view the file in its original format the user has to open the PDF form template in Acrobat and import the XML data file. ColdFusion automates the process of reuniting XML data with the PDF form that generated it. To do this you use the populate action of the cfpdfform tag specify the source which is the PDF form used as a template and specify the XML data file that contains the information submitted by the person who completed the form. You also have the option to save the result to a new file which lets you save the completed forms in their original format (and not just the form data). In the following example ColdFusion populates the payslipTemplate.pdf form with data from the formdata.xml data file and writes the form to a new PDF file called employeeid123.pdf: For forms created in LiveCycle you have the option to write the output to an XML Data Package (XDP) file rather than a PDF file. For more information see Writing LiveCycle form output to an XDP file . Note: If you do not specify a destination the populate action displays the populated PDF form in a browser window. When you populate a form with an XML data file ensure that the XML data is in the appropriate format. The format of the XML data file differs based on whether it was generated from Acrobat or LiveCycle. Acrobat generates an XML Forms Data Format (XFDF) file format. The following example shows the XFDF format: - - - textvalue - textvalue1 Forms created in LiveCycle require an XML Forms Architecture (XFA) format. The following example shows an XFA format: - - 354325426 coldfusion 354325426.00 - I would suggest using the 4th approach if possible because it would be cleaner. You would be using solutions specifically tailored for what you are asking to do but if you don't have the available resources for such a solution I would suggest using the 1st option. The 1st option is what I have recently dove into. I have found it relatively painless to implement. Option 1 is possible if the following applies: You have control of development of PDF forms. You have control of formating xml data You have can live with having uncompressed (fastweb=false) PDF files Example of implementation: Using Adobe Acrobat to generate a PDF form. Tip: Use Adobe Native Fonts when generating the forms. For each control you add that is not a native font it will import the font used and bloat the file when it is not compressed and to my knowledge ITextSharp currently does not produce compressed PDFs. Using ITextSharp Library to combine XML data with the PDF form to generate a populated document. Tip: to manually populate a PDF form from xml you must map xml values to control names in the PDF form and match them by page as shown in the example below. using ( MemoryStream stream = GeneratePDF ( m_FormsPath  oXmlData )) { byte [] bytes = stream . ToArray (); Response . ContentType = application/pdf ; Response . BinaryWrite ( bytes ); Response . End (); } // // This method combines pdf forms with xml data // // pdf form file path // xml dataset // memory stream containing the pdf data private MemoryStream GeneratePDF ( string m_FormName  XmlDocument oData ) { PdfReader pdfTemplate ; PdfStamper stamper ; PdfReader tempPDF ; Document doc ; MemoryStream msTemp ; PdfWriter pCopy ; MemoryStream msOutput = new MemoryStream (); pdfTemplate = new PdfReader ( m_FormName ); doc = new Document (); pCopy = new PdfCopy ( doc  msOutput ); pCopy . AddViewerPreference ( PdfName . PICKTRAYBYPDFSIZE  new PdfBoolean ( true )); pCopy . AddViewerPreference ( PdfName . PRINTSCALING  PdfName . NONE ); doc . Open (); for ( int i = 1 ; i pdfTemplate . NumberOfPages + 1 ; i ++) { msTemp = new MemoryStream (); pdfTemplate = new PdfReader ( m_FormName ); stamper = new PdfStamper ( pdfTemplate  msTemp ); // map xml values to pdf form controls (element name = control name) foreach ( XmlElement oElem in oData . SelectNodes ( /form/page + i + /* )) { stamper . AcroFields . SetField ( oElem . Name  oElem . InnerText ); } stamper . FormFlattening = true ; stamper . Close (); tempPDF = new PdfReader ( msTemp . ToArray ()); (( PdfCopy ) pCopy ). AddPage ( pCopy . GetImportedPage ( tempPDF  i )); pCopy . FreeReader ( tempPDF ); } doc . Close (); return msOutput ; } Save the File or post the file to the response of your ASP.Net page If this post help to resolve ur issue please accept this as accepted answer.