Is it possible to populate a PDF from FDF data? (Receiving FDF to Azure since PDF file is too large)

[Daniel5FFC]

I have created a PDF that contains the usual fillable form data, text boxes, dropdowns, etc. I will be sending this out to clients and they will be filling it out and submitting the form, this form will go up to Azure and be pulled down into my application. As part of this process, the document that has been submitted will need to be reviewed in my application by a different user before being approved.

This is where I am having difficulty since I can't submit the file as a PDF to Azure since its too large in file size, I can however submit the file as an FDF (which to my knowledge just contains the form field data and not the likes of labels, etc.), my problem is trying to read this FDF file in the application, since it's not containing all of the data as a PDF would. 

So my question is, is it possible to receive the file as an FDF when the client submits it, and then populate the PDF with the FDF data that I have received? Since the PDF I will be populating will be the exact same as the one that the client submitted the data from, I will then be able to use a PDF viewer in my application to properly show the PDF and the file size won't be an issue as I will be populating the PDF file on my end rather than it being submitted through Azure. 

Any help appreciated, 

Thanks

[BarlaeDC]

HI,

Yes, you are able to open a FDF file in a PDF and it should populate the form,  you can look at the importAnFDF and exportAnFDF as methods that can make it easier to work with FDF's.

Regards

Malcolm

[Daniel5FFC]

So would this importAnFDF method be on a mouse up function within the PDF document, where I would potentially pass in the FDF document path into this call? i.e. importAnFDF(document path) which would then fill out the PDF with the FDF data

[George_Johnson]

You should read the documentation available at: https://help.adobe.com/en_US/acrobat/acrobat_dc_sdk/2015/HTMLHelp/#t=Acro12_MasterBook%2FJS_API_Acro...

[JR Boulay]

You just have to double-clic a FDF file for Acrobat automatically opens and populate data in the corresponding PDF, if Acrobat cannot find the PDF (file path) it will prompt you to select it.

"is it possible to receive the file as an FDF when the client submits it"

Yes.

"my problem is trying to read this FDF file in the application"

You should try to export the data to a XFDF (XML structure) file or to a HTML file, which should be easier to parse.

FDF is a "for Acrobat only" data interchange format.