I wrote a step-by-step tutorial (English) of PDF form submission without any coding
– using REST and Reader Extensions ES2
What’s my purpose?
- Imagine you have designed a PDF form using LiveCycle Designer. It’s quite easy even you are non-technical background.
- Without any coding, the only easier way for submitting this form is using Email. (e.g. mailto://someone@email_address)
- However, if you consider a large group of users and a centralized organization, you will prefer to submitting to a HTTP URL instead. (e.g. http://somewhere@url_address)
- But how can you do that? For example, It can be retrieved by “multipart/form-data” of the submitted data. Or writing a server-side code to handle the HTTP request and response.
- Here is the problem. Many users may don’t know how to implement. Even they’ve got the sample server code, they still don’t know how to handle and maintain it. This becomes a barrier in fast adaption.
- So I want to find a solution to support the non-coding integration.
- Without any coding.
- Minimize the learning curve to start our usage – only Designer and Workbench. It integrates front end, receiver, and processing services.
- Simple design concept – Drag & drop and Properties setting.
- Powerful tools.
- Form fields – Text, image, date, digital signature, button, paper barcode (1D, 2D), …
- Data connection (XML Schema, Web services, database, Adobe data model).
- Dynamic fields, Reusable form fragments, Validation, Action Builder.
- Version control (History), Process debug by Record and Playback.
- Endpoints (web services, API, email, watched folder, flex remoting).
- Wow. Is that wonderful ?
– For PDF form, we design it by LiveCycle Designer ES2.
- Besides the form fields, we place a submit button.
- It submits to the REST URL of LiveCycle process.
– For LiveCycle, we design a related process using Workbench ES2.
- Receive a PDF form as Input (default startpoint – REST).
- Extract the XML data (exportData operation).
- Save the XML to server (writeXML operation).
- Modify the XML data (Set Value service).
- Insert it back to the input PDF form and return it to user (importData operation).
- Note: I use the same PDF form as output is just for simplicity only. You can assign the output PDF for welcome letter, task record or report.
– Expected result:
- When an user submitted a PDF form to LiveCycle server, the system will save the extracted XML data. Then it modifies some fields and return a PDF back to the user.