Merge data and flaten a PDF form.
I am working for the first time on using ColdFusion to populate PDF forms.
I have a simple PDF form I created with my Acrobat 9 Pro tool. Using the following code, pretty much straight from the documentation, I can easily populate the fields in the PDF with data and save a new PDF file with that data.
<cfpdfform
source="#getDirectoryFromPath(getCurrentTemplatePath())#QP-ExpiringLetter.pdf"
destination="#getDirectoryFromPath(getCurrentTemplatePath())#test.pdf"
action="populate">
<cfpdfformparam name="bus_name" value="123 PEST CONTROL">
<cfpdfformparam name="bus_address" value="1234 MAIN STREET">
<cfpdfformparam name="bus_city_state_zip" value="HOMETOWN, CA 98765">
</cfpdfform>
But the file is still a "Form" file with the fields editable. I do not want this. I want a static PDF file with the fields filled in with the data I provided. Looking at the documentation, it seems the <CFPDF...> tag has functionality to flatten such form files and do what I want. What I can not find documentation for, or guess at, is HOW to combine these two tags. I know I could work with a PDF variable in the <CFPDF...> tag, but I see no way to capture the output of the <CFPDFFORM...> tag into such a variable, I can only send the output to the browser or a file.
Is that the only way to do this? Send the output to a file, then read that file with the <CFPDF...> tag to flatten it to another file? That seems a bit IO overhead heavy for what I feel should be able to be done in memory with just one file write.
TIA
Ian
