Hi.I am trying to find out if it is possible to open a pdf file fromwithin PHP, and parse its contents in order to extract all formfieldnames that might have been previously setup within the pdfitself.I want to find this out so that I can then generate a HTML form withall required questions, which when submitted, will generate a fdf /xfdf file, using the techniques from the following tutorialIdeally, I don't want to have to install any libraries to help withthis though. Is it possible, and if so how?Kind regards,Andy.
On Feb 20, 6:25 pm, 'Bill Segraves' wrote:Google is your friend.Pdftk, available from.See the example 'Fill PDF Forms Using an HTML Front-End' ata solution.Cheers,-Bill SegravesHi Bill.Thanks for your response.Yes, indeed Google helped me come across Pdftk in my research, butunfortunately I cannot use this as it falls under GPL, and my endsolution would be for a system that I unfortunately could not likewiseGPL, and therefore counts this out of the running (hence my need for alesser licensed library or indeed no library at all - DIY style:-/).Thanks,Andy. 'Perks' Hi Bill.Thanks for your response.Yes, indeed Google helped me come across Pdftk in my research, butunfortunately I cannot use this as it falls under GPL, and my endsolution would be for a system that I unfortunately could not likewiseGPL, and therefore counts this out of the running (hence my need for alesser licensed library or indeed no library at all - DIY style:-/).Andy, it appears your reasoning may be flawed, i.e., you want to parse a PDFwith PHP in order to discover the names of the form fields. You really don'thave to parse the PDF to determine the names of the form fields, as you can'submit' (as HTML - URLencoded name=value pairs) the PDF form to a scriptthat will do the parsing for you, transforming the form data into an HTMLform.A script to parse the form data can be written in about one line of code,exclusive of various decalrations, in Perl.
I don't know how many LOC itwould take in PHP.Cheers,-Bill Segraves. On Feb 20, 9:32 pm, 'Bill Segraves' wrote:Andy, it appears your reasoning may be flawed, i.e., you want to parse a PDFwith PHP in order to discover the names of the form fields. You really don'thave to parse the PDF to determine the names of the form fields, as you can'submit' (as HTML - URLencoded name=value pairs) the PDF form to a scriptthat will do the parsing for you, transforming the form data into an HTMLform.A script to parse the form data can be written in about one line of code,exclusive of various decalrations, in Perl. I don't know how many LOC itwould take in PHP.Cheers,-Bill SegravesHi Bill.Thanks for taking the time to respond to me again.Perhaps I should elaborate a little more on the background to myproject.Basically, I want for administrators to be able to upload a PDF Form,that they have created in various authoring tools, and formattedproperly within acrobat etc to my system.I then want to parse out the form fields dynamically from the pdfsource so that I can then create a PHP / XHTML Form representation ofthat pdf form, which their websites users will then complete. On Feb 21, 8:09 am, 'Perks' wrote:Andy, it appears your reasoning may be flawed, i.e., you want to parse a PDFwith PHP in order to discover the names of the form fields. You really don'thave to parse the PDF to determine the names of the form fields, as you can'submit' (as HTML - URLencoded name=value pairs) the PDF form to a scriptthat will do the parsing for you, transforming the form data into an HTMLform.A script to parse the form data can be written in about one line of code,exclusive of various decalrations, in Perl.
I don't know how many LOC itwould take in PHP.Cheers,-Bill SegravesHi Bill.Thanks for taking the time to respond to me again.Perhaps I should elaborate a little more on the background to myproject.Basically, I want for administrators to be able to upload a PDF Form,that they have created in various authoring tools, and formattedproperly within acrobat etc to my system.I then want to parse out the form fields dynamically from the pdfsource so that I can then create a PHP / XHTML Form representation ofthat pdf form, which their websites users will then complete. 'Perks' Hi Bill.Thanks for taking the time to respond to me again.You're very welcome.Perhaps I should elaborate a little more on the background to myproject.Basically, I want for administrators to be able to upload a PDF Form,that they have created in various authoring tools, and formattedproperly within acrobat etc to my system.I then want to parse out the form fields dynamically from the pdfsourceYou could use iText, available free from, to retrievethe form fields from the PDF (See Chapter 16 of Bruno Lowagie's book, iTextin Action, available from, for details). Forlicensing details, see the FAQ.so that I can then create a PHP / XHTML Form representation ofthat pdf form, which their websites users will then complete.
Form filling Form filling InformationsAuthor: OlivierLicense: FPDFDescriptionThis script allows to merge data into a PDF form. Given a template PDF with text fields, it'spossible to inject values in two different ways:. from a PHP array.
Php Fdf
from an FDF fileThe resulting document is produced by the Output method, which works the same as for FPDF.Note: if your template PDF is not compatible with this script, you can process it withthis way:pdftk modele.pdf output modele2.pdfThen try again with modele2.pdf.Note: an improved version of this script (with checkbox support) is available.ExampleThis example shows how to merge data from an array.