Programmatic execution of XFA dynamic row logic outside Adobe Acrobat

Question

We are working on automating interactive PDFs created using Adobe Acrobat that rely on XFA for dynamic behavior, such as adding repeating rows using an Add button.

Using backend processing with iText 7 in .NET, we are able to inspect and modify static AcroForm/XFA XML content and populate fixed fields successfully.

However, we are unable to programmatically trigger the dynamic row creation behavior that works when the PDF is opened in Adobe Acrobat and the Add button is clicked. Our understanding is that this behavior depends on Adobe’s internal XFA runtime, which executes only within the Acrobat client and is not accessible via backend code or APIs.

Can you please confirm the following:
1. Is there any Adobe supported API or SDK that allows execution of XFA dynamic form logic outside Adobe Acrobat?
2. Is the XFA runtime strictly limited to the Acrobat client environment?
3. Is generating a static PDF with pre-rendered rows the recommended approach when the number of rows is known in advance?

Thom Parker · Answer

XFA is used almost exclusively for the Adobe Enterprise toolset. Which is called AEM. It includes a server that executes the dynamic form features. And fills in the data correctly, which I do not believe can be done using iText.

https://business.adobe.com/products/experience-manager/adobe-experience-manager.html

But you do not need the AEM server to correctly add data into a dynamic form. You could use Cold Fusion as a back end. I believe it has XFA features built-in.

Another way is to modify the XFA dataset directly.

At it's most basic level a dynamic XFA form is composed of two elements (XML tree branches): a data set, and a form template. When Acrobat loads the XFA it merges the two to create the runtime form.

The entire XFA XML code, or just hte dataset and a reference to the original PDF, can be extracted from the PDF, into an "XDP" file. It's just XML, so then it can be modified with any XML toolset to add the data into the dataset. The modified XML includes a reference to the original PDF, so it can be loaded directly into Acrobat and Acrobat will properly merge the two.

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