Change a detachable PDF field

Question

I’m working on MVC 4 and installed the iTextSharp to create PDF’s, until everything well. But what I am doing is replicating a PDF that already exists, to fill the respective fields required in this created PDF.

Now arises the doubt:

The PDF I’m replicating has those fields called detachable, That is, we can open the PDF and write to them as if we were editing the PDF. It is possible from iTextSharp to open this same PDF file, detect these fields and write to them from the controller?

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible! You need to use the namespace iTextSharp.text.pdf. camposDict is a IDictionary traditional.

Follow the implementation I use:

public string PDFReplace(
               string path, // PATH do arquivo
               string arquivo, // NOME do arquivo com extensão
               object camposDict // IDictionary
               )
{
    string pathPdf = string.Empty;
    PdfReader pdf = new PdfReader(@path.ToString());
    MemoryStream outStream = new MemoryStream();
    PdfStamper stamper = new PdfStamper(pdf, outStream);

    AcroFields fields = stamper.AcroFields;

    foreach (DictionaryEntry de in (Hashtable)camposDict)
    {
        string Key = (string)de.Key;
        string value = de.Value.ToString();

        fields.SetField(Key, value);
    }

    stamper.FormFlattening = true;
    stamper.Close();
    pdf.Close();

    string urlPasta = path.ToString().Substring(0, path.ToString().LastIndexOf("\\"));

    File.WriteAllBytes(urlPasta + "\\" + arquivo.ToString().ToUpper(), outStream.ToArray());
    return urlPasta + "\\" + arquivo.ToString().ToUpper();
}

Update

An addendum: the IDictionary should be composed by the name of the PDF dynamic field (yes, they need to be named) and the respective value of it.

Answer 2

Friend, we will better understand the application of your system... I could not understand what you need, so we can give a better answer.

Will you have a Form, or contract, or something like that that needs to be filled out by multiple customers or employees? Through the right system?

Does the content of this PDF constantly change? Are there several types of forms? (If both are negative you canif you put its contents fixed in your code or save the text in a table from a screen where the user who mounts the form type and click on a button that adds a gap and so on and when it comes to generating the PDF within the application you replace these Tags by fields.)

UPDATE:

I found an example that might help you!

//Read all 'Form values/keys' from an existing multi-page PDF document
public void ReadPDFformDataPageWise()
{
PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(Server.MapPath(P_InputStream3));
AcroFields form = reader.AcroFields;
try
{
for (int page = 1; page <= reader.NumberOfPages; page++)
{
    foreach (KeyValuePair<string, AcroFields.Item> kvp in form.Fields)
    {
        switch (form.GetFieldType(kvp.Key))
        {
            case AcroFields.FIELD_TYPE_CHECKBOX:
            case AcroFields.FIELD_TYPE_COMBO:
            case AcroFields.FIELD_TYPE_LIST:
            case AcroFields.FIELD_TYPE_RADIOBUTTON:
            case AcroFields.FIELD_TYPE_NONE:
            case AcroFields.FIELD_TYPE_PUSHBUTTON:
            case AcroFields.FIELD_TYPE_SIGNATURE:
            case AcroFields.FIELD_TYPE_TEXT:
                int fileType = form.GetFieldType(kvp.Key);
                string fieldValue = form.GetField(kvp.Key);
                string translatedFileName = form.GetTranslatedFieldName(kvp.Key);
                break;
        }
    }
}
}
catch
{
}
finally
{
    reader.Close();
}
}

This and other examples of how to use iTextSharp you find at this link