PDF Creation & Web usage

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ToddW2

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I've never created my own PDF from "scratch", normally I just generate them from docs or screenshots, and for 'web' we create our own interface, and forms that match but were not PDF.

I have someone wondering about generating some (PDF) Documents for them in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format so that the web user can "fill in the blanks" (on the web browser), and then print with his data printing where it should be on the document. And ideally it could also act like a normal web-form and save to the mYsql db.


I have no clue how interactive .PDF files can be online and their limits... someone school me :)
 
Why not just print/download the webform as a PDF. You can have PDFs with editable fields but having the PDF send the form data to a server or a server accessing PDF form data seems undoable unless you're doing some funky PDF parsing.
 
I think you misunderstood or I wasn't clear. The web form is for gathering user input to be placed on the PDF for "print", this is how we do it now. However, our codebase for rendering/generating the output files needs a complete overhaul and in an attempt to keep the site running now vs. waiting to update and taking it offline I'm exploring editable PDF.

Thus, I was curious about using the PDF itself and rules, etc.. Hopefully someone has done something similar and say "yeah, too much time... keep it web based" or "Nah, it's not a big deal to generate editable PDFs".


Thanks
 
The only way I have personally seen it done is to create an RDLC template and provide it the values you want from the user.

It seems to have a gothcha that is the opposite of what you would expect though. Normally you would expect the template the complain if you ask for data from a model that you didn't provide it. From what I understand RDLC will complain if you provide data the template data that it does ask for :confused:
 
Thanks. I was rather certain I'd have heard of this a lot more if it were easily/possible.

So, it sounds like the real question I should be asking is:

How much time does creating/designing a PDF from scratch in Acrobat take? (We're talking a legal document that has boxes, and borders, etc... no images/graphics or that sort of thing). Then my user can just access the PDF via the web - fill it out - and click PRINT.
 
If you already have the form made in a Word doc or Excel spreadsheet, Acrobat has a wizard that will run through and make the fillable form. You can then tweak it, remove and add fields and even give it some business logic and validation including required fields. It can easily be done in under an hour if you already have the form made for say a full single page form.
 
I haven't used this for a few years, but I had a good experience working with ABCpdf.
 
ToddW2 said:
How much time does creating/designing a PDF from scratch in Acrobat take? (We're talking a legal document that has boxes, and borders, etc... no images/graphics or that sort of thing). Then my user can just access the PDF via the web - fill it out - and click PRINT.
Click to expand...


It's pretty straight forward in Acrobat. You take the original PDF, drag and drop form elements into the right areas and then you're done.
 
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