Skip to main content
nathang78560588
nathang78560588
Inspiring
March 10, 2019
Answered

Can I import the data from a column in a tab denim file and use it to populate the items in a dropdown/combo box, loading on document open?

  • March 10, 2019
  • 3 replies
  • 3406 views

Hello experienced JSers.

I'm starting to get to grips with a bit of Javascript knowledge, from being a total fresher a couple of weeks ago. Now that my eyes have been opened to to what is possible, I want to be able to utilise what I've learnt as much as I can.

I have a fillable form, created with Acrobat Pro DC and it contains a lot of fields for customer info (first name, last name, three address fields, telephone number, and email address, etc). One of them is simply called "Company", and is for the company name that the customer works for.

I have set up a dropdown list/combo box for Company, and I've got it linked to a tab delimited .txt file, using a folder-level script as follows:

var Trusted_importAddress = app.trustedFunction(importAddress);
function importAddress()
{
   app.beginPriv();
   var cCoNoforImport = this.getField("Company").value;
    this.importTextData("/**FULLFILEPATH**/**FILENAME**.txt", cCoNoforImport);
   app.endPriv();
}

The script is being called by the following code, onBlur from the actions section of the dropdown box's properties.

Trusted_importAddress(this);

At the moment, it is all working well, and on the selection from the user of the item in the Company dropdown, the form fills in all the relevant fields on the rest of the form, using the data from the .txt file.

Great.

The thing is, I have had to manually specify all the company names and add the export values as the row numbers in the text file, putting them all into the options section of the box's properties one by one.

What I'm looking for is this:

When the form file loads in acrobat, I want it to import the data from the Company column in the .txt file, and automatically populate the Company Dropdown box with all of the items in that column. (Then, selecting the company name in the drop down will still populate th eother fields with the relevant data, as happens now.)

There are a couple of other requirements, but I'll be happy with the above for now, and the rest can come later, but if anyone can help with combining the above with the below, I'll be over the moon:

In an ideal world, I would like the ability to be able to type in entries for a customer whose details are not in my .txt file. That's not an issue, but It would be amazing if once the details had been filled in on the form, the form could have a button (or a custom menu item, based on security requirements) that could get the data that I have entered into the form, and put it into the .txt file, as a new line, saving the txt file with the new customer for future use.

Whether that would require  getting the entire txt file as a massive array, and adding the new data to the end, then saving it as a new file but with the same name, so that it overwrites the old one, or whether the new info can be appended to the end of the existing file, and saved that way, I'm not sure.

If anyone reading this is able to help with any part of this rather large reques, I will be eternally grateful. Ireally appreciate the time and effort of anyone who trues to help on forums like this, whether or not I am abe to mak theur suggestions work in practice.

Thanks in advance for your time.

Nathan

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Thom Parker

I want to start by saying that I really am very grateful to you for taking the time to provide this code.

I'm very confused, however, about exactly where I am supposed to put all of these pieces of code. You said before, that you would write it as a document level script, but when I try to do that, the "var oFile" and "var cFile" lines throw back an error that I don't have the correct security settings for that, so I can only assume that they are privileged, and need to be called from a trusted function. I; 've never yet been able to make a trusted function work. I don't; know how to call it, how to reference it, where to out the variables (If I put them in the trusted function, at folder level, they are undefined when I try to call the function at document level, and the same is true in reverse. I've tried slicing up the code line by line, and putting some in the trusted function and some in the document level script, but I am really stumped, and I'm genuinely starting to lose my sanity over this.

That's one part of the problem.

I might be misreading your advice about how to get the data to populate the other form fields on selection of the company name.

It sounds like you are saying I have to code the different options manually, but there will be hundreds of options, and having to do that individually negates the point of trying to set this up in the first place.

What I need is for the pdf to read the tab.txt file, and put all of the company names into separate lines of the dropdown box, on document open.

I guess it should also assign the export value of the dropdown box in each case, to match the position in the tab.txt file, so that clicking on the company name will automatically select the correct line in the text file, and load the corresponding names into the relevant fields on the rest of the form. It needs to be done this dynamically, so that when there are additions to the contacts list, I can just update the text file, and the next time the pdf gets opened, it will suck in the updated info, and be able to use it without having to do anything to the pdf.

I hope that makes it clear if it wasn't before.

So as things stand, I can't work out where everything needs to go, and the stuff that I had managed to get even close to working, although throwing a lot of errors at me in the process (that seemed to be different every flaming time!), was loading an entire row of data into the dropdown, and repeating the same data for as many lines in the dropdown as there are in the text file.

I'm literally at the end of my tether.

Thanks for any help that can make this work.


Ok, So you are/were on the right track.

1) Yes, the function that loads the names from the file has to be a folder level trusted function, because trust is require for this functionality (unless you don't include the file path). But the correct place to call that function is in a document level script. Document level scripts are called once, when the document is open.  However, this is working already, so I'd suggest concentrating on the part that doesn't work.

2)  Getting data from the selection into the other form fields is another thing. As you've seen there are lots of different ways to make this  happen. You're original import strategy would work, except I imagine that you're getting an error.  But it's fixable. Two other strategies are to load the other data into the export value of the dropdown item, and to load the data into a document level array.  Both of these strategies will be less problematic than the importTextData.

So, use this code as part of the import code

  1. var aListEntries = [], cVal;
  2. for (i = 0; i < yourCode.length; i++){ 
  3.     var tempArray = yourCode.split('\t'); 
  4.     cVal = tempArray.shift();
  5.     aListEntries.push([cVal,tempArray.join(",")]);
  6. } 

Use aListEntries as the dropdown entries, the export value is all the other values from the same line in the Text file.

Then on the dropdown selection, use this code in the Validation script

var aValues = event.value.split(",");

this.getField("First Value").value = aValues[0];

this.getField("Second Value").value = aValues[1];

this.getField("Third Value").value = aValues[2];

etc...

Change the field names to match the named of your fields for each of the values.

3 replies

logistics227043683
logistics227043683
Known Participant
March 11, 2019

It is certainly possible, and Try has it down. I would pull the text file into the script via readFileIntoStream, like this: 

var oFile = util.readFileIntoStream(PLACE cPATH HERE.txt);
var cFile = util.stringFromStream(oFile, "utf-8");
var yourCode = cFile.split("\n");

After you have the cPath set up for your text file, I would create a loop and push the first index into an array.

var i;
var loopGet = [];
for (i = 0; i < yourCode.length; i++){
     loopGet.push(yourCode[0]);
}

This should theoretically push the entire first column of your tab delimited text file into the variable, "loopGet."

tweak the code as needed.

nathang78560588
nathang78560588Author
Inspiring
March 11, 2019

That all looks very much like what I’m looking for. I hope to get the chance to ay with that this evening and see if I can get it working. Thanks so much, I need that sort of help, as I’m completely new to this, with no coding experience e whatsoever, and although I’m learning fast, I’m aware that I don’t know any of the basics that are so vital to understanding the sort of discussion of solutions that people are so kind to give me: unfortunately I do t have enough knowledge yet to know what I should do unless I’m given the example codes as you have done here, so I’m incredibly grateful to you!

One question before I dive in: is this code that should be places in a config file at folder level, or is it a validation script?

Thanks so much.

NathanG

Thom Parker
Community Expert
Thom ParkerCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
March 13, 2019

I want to start by saying that I really am very grateful to you for taking the time to provide this code.

I'm very confused, however, about exactly where I am supposed to put all of these pieces of code. You said before, that you would write it as a document level script, but when I try to do that, the "var oFile" and "var cFile" lines throw back an error that I don't have the correct security settings for that, so I can only assume that they are privileged, and need to be called from a trusted function. I; 've never yet been able to make a trusted function work. I don't; know how to call it, how to reference it, where to out the variables (If I put them in the trusted function, at folder level, they are undefined when I try to call the function at document level, and the same is true in reverse. I've tried slicing up the code line by line, and putting some in the trusted function and some in the document level script, but I am really stumped, and I'm genuinely starting to lose my sanity over this.

That's one part of the problem.

I might be misreading your advice about how to get the data to populate the other form fields on selection of the company name.

It sounds like you are saying I have to code the different options manually, but there will be hundreds of options, and having to do that individually negates the point of trying to set this up in the first place.

What I need is for the pdf to read the tab.txt file, and put all of the company names into separate lines of the dropdown box, on document open.

I guess it should also assign the export value of the dropdown box in each case, to match the position in the tab.txt file, so that clicking on the company name will automatically select the correct line in the text file, and load the corresponding names into the relevant fields on the rest of the form. It needs to be done this dynamically, so that when there are additions to the contacts list, I can just update the text file, and the next time the pdf gets opened, it will suck in the updated info, and be able to use it without having to do anything to the pdf.

I hope that makes it clear if it wasn't before.

So as things stand, I can't work out where everything needs to go, and the stuff that I had managed to get even close to working, although throwing a lot of errors at me in the process (that seemed to be different every flaming time!), was loading an entire row of data into the dropdown, and repeating the same data for as many lines in the dropdown as there are in the text file.

I'm literally at the end of my tether.

Thanks for any help that can make this work.


Ok, So you are/were on the right track.

1) Yes, the function that loads the names from the file has to be a folder level trusted function, because trust is require for this functionality (unless you don't include the file path). But the correct place to call that function is in a document level script. Document level scripts are called once, when the document is open.  However, this is working already, so I'd suggest concentrating on the part that doesn't work.

2)  Getting data from the selection into the other form fields is another thing. As you've seen there are lots of different ways to make this  happen. You're original import strategy would work, except I imagine that you're getting an error.  But it's fixable. Two other strategies are to load the other data into the export value of the dropdown item, and to load the data into a document level array.  Both of these strategies will be less problematic than the importTextData.

So, use this code as part of the import code

  1. var aListEntries = [], cVal;
  2. for (i = 0; i < yourCode.length; i++){ 
  3.     var tempArray = yourCode.split('\t'); 
  4.     cVal = tempArray.shift();
  5.     aListEntries.push([cVal,tempArray.join(",")]);
  6. } 

Use aListEntries as the dropdown entries, the export value is all the other values from the same line in the Text file.

Then on the dropdown selection, use this code in the Validation script

var aValues = event.value.split(",");

this.getField("First Value").value = aValues[0];

this.getField("Second Value").value = aValues[1];

this.getField("Third Value").value = aValues[2];

etc...

Change the field names to match the named of your fields for each of the values.

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScriptingUse the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often
Thom Parker
Community Expert
Thom ParkerCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 10, 2019

Read these two articles:

https://acrobatusers.com/tutorials/getting-external-data-into-acrobat-x-javascript

https://www.pdfscripting.com/public/ExcelAndAcrobat.cfm

The onBlur event is not the correct place to be modifying field values.  It would be much better to use the validation event, to the import only happens on a value change.

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScriptingUse the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often
try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
March 10, 2019

Yes, it is possible, but it requires a different, more complex, script.

You would basically need to read the contents of the text file (using util.readFileIntoStream, for example), parse them and convert to an array and then apply them to the field using setItems.

Notice that when you do that it overwrites the field's current value so you'll probably want to add code to save that value before setting the new items, and then re-apply it afterwards.

Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices