DPF portfolio with fillable dependable pdf forms

Question

I have pdf portfolio with some fillable pdf forms in it. This portfolio is generated via LiveCycle services. All of these pdf forms have equivalent fields. For example: portfolio consists of pdfX, pdfY, pfdZ. And every pdf have fillable field "userName". And it is not convenient for a user to put the same data to every pdf form. User wants to put data only to the first one pdf. So, other pdf forms must be filled with data automatically. And, there is one restriction: user can't send portfilio back to the server, so all automated changes must be done on the client side.

So, is there any way to solve such task? If there is, please describe some algorithm\strategy of how this can be done.

Thank you.

Answer 1

You seem to be looking for a way to programmatically access or change the content of a portfolio element from another portfolio element. This requires the first element to be aware of the other element.

This is what I found on The PDF Developer Junkie Blog when I investigated in the possibilites of scripting portfolios. Take a look at the last paragraph. Maybe it'll point you in the right direction.

Dennis Smith | April 07, 2010 3:13 PM |

I hope you can help me. I have two pdf files combined into 1 portfolio. File 1 has a field “name” and File 2 has a field “lastname”. When someone enters a value into the field “name” in File 1, I want File 2 to contain the same value in the field “lastname”. This would be for files that are distributed to the public, so I really can’t change the security levels of the user’s computers. Right now I am combining File 1 and File 2 into a larger File 3 and just handling all of this with javascript. getField(“lastname”).value=getField(“name”).value;

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Joel Geraci | April 07, 2010 3:28 PM |

Thanks for the comment: Unfortunately, that’s not possible without adding a folder level JavaScript that can add a menu item to synchronize the fields or by disabling the navigator (Flash UI) of the Portfolio.

If you disabled the navigator, you could add a button to the “Cover Sheet” that synchronized the fields.

The main issue is that items in a Portfolio cannot communicate directly with their peers and don’t know anything about their parent. The root PDF (cover sheet) does know about it’s children which is why a button placed there will be able to synch the fields.