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nathang78560588
nathang78560588
Inspiring
April 20, 2019
Answered

filepath for a .txt file attached to a pdf form

  • April 20, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 1850 views

Hello, all,

I have a pdf form which contains fields for all my clients' contact details (Name, Address, Telephone, Email, Website, Instagram etc). Thanks to a LOT of help from this forum, I have set it up so that all of these fields are populated when I select the company name from a dropdown list. The data is stored in a tab-delimited file at a fixed, specified location on my hard drive. (oh, I'm on Acrobat DC).

What I'd REALLY like to be able to do, is attach the .txt file to the pdf itself, so that it doesn't matter where I move it to, it will carry its own datasheet around with it.

The script I use currently to get the data from the txt file is:

var Trusted_readContactDetails = app.trustedFunction(readContactDetails);
function readContactDetails()
{
app.beginPriv();
   var oFile = util.readFileIntoStream("/Macintosh HD/Users/somefoldernames/morefolders/InvoiceContacts.txt");    
   var cFile = util.stringFromStream(oFile, "utf-8");     
   var yourCode = cFile.split("\n");            
   var i;      
   var aListEntries = [], cVal;
for (i = 0; i < yourCode.length; i++){ 
    var tempArray = yourCode.split('\t'); 
    cVal = tempArray.shift();
    aListEntries.push([cVal,tempArray.join(";")]);
} 
  this.getField("SelectCompany").setItems(aListEntries); 
app.endPriv();
}

What I'd like to know is what path do I need to specify to reference the .txt file if it is attched to the parent pdf?

Any help gratefully recieved, and thanks in advance for your time.

Nathan

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer try67

Hmm...

If only I could tell you that that had worked.

All that happens now is that the console throws back that "getDataObjectContents is not a function".

Any ideas where the problem could lie? I'm afraid I'm now well beyond my capacity for tinkering.

Thanks again.


Try adding "this." before it. Also, I think you can get rid of all the trusted function stuff. It's not necessary when reading the data from an attached file.

1 reply

try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
April 20, 2019

No path at all. You would need to use a different approach. Namely, read the contents of the file using the getDataObjectContents method, instead of the readFileIntoStream method.

nathang78560588
nathang78560588Author
Inspiring
April 21, 2019

Ah, now this sends me down a path to uncharted territory for my limited knowledge.

Does the getDataObjectContents require any additional coding, or can I simply replace:

var oFile = util.readFileIntoStream("/Macintosh HD/Users/somefoldernames/morefolders/InvoiceContacts.txt");

With:

var oFile = getDataObjectContents("InvoiceContacts.txt");

?

try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
April 21, 2019

I believe that change should be sufficient, as it also returns a stream object.

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