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Database connection SELECT stmt based on user input

j.reinert
Registered: Mar 15 2011
Posts: 7
Answered

Hello all,
 
I am new to the Adobe world. I am trying to create a form that loads employee information based on user entered data. I have the form setup in LifeCycle with a database connection, and I currently am using the bind to connect the specific fields to the dB fields, but I am starting to think I will need to update them via a script. The connection works. I am wanting to run a SQL SELECT statement when a user enters an ID into a text field, with the onBlur/LostFocus/Changed event. If the load is successful I want to populate fields on the form, last name, first name, address, etc. Is there any way to do this in LiveCycle or any Adobe product? The end result that I am trying to achieve is a PDF file that an employee views on our intranet, enters an employee number, fills in the missing values, then prints the page, rinse and repeat as needed. Hopefully later we will move to digital signatures, but that is later. I am hoping to not load the entire dB user table into memory when the PDF is loaded by the user.
 
Thanks in advance,
 
Josh

Josh Reinert
Web Developer / EDI Developer
United Furniture Industries

My Product Information:
LiveCycle Designer, Windows
NK-INC.COM
Registered: Apr 17 2010
Posts: 93
You can use iText (JAVA/LINUX), iTextSharp(.net), FDFToolkit(Adobe OCX) to serve FDF (Acroforms) data to a web browser. However, if you need LiveCycle capabilities, then FDFToolkit.net by NK-Inc.com can create, modify, and parse XDP as well as FDF, XFDF, XML, and ADO.net datarows.

FDFToolkit.net works on Windows .Net web servers, since FDFToolkit.net is a pure .net library it doesn't need to be installed on the servers, and it can work in just about any hosting environment.

FDFToolkit.net works very similar to Adobe's FDF Toolkit, and has simalar syntax.

FDFToolkit.net can populate a PDF form, and merge data from a database and output the document to the web browser. It can also parse PDF form data submissions, and save to a data row record in a database.



Code Examples:
http://www.nk-inc.com/blog/

Online Examples:
http://www.nk-inc.com/software/fdftoolkit.net/examples/

For more information visit the website:
http://www.fdftoolkit.net/

j.reinert
Registered: Mar 15 2011
Posts: 7
Hi Nick,

Sorry for the delay, I am working on multiple projects and this one isn't due for a few weeks. This is for our Intranet which is running Apache Web Server 2.2 most of the pages are PHP, so currently I do not have .Net setup to run on it. I have downloaded the latest JDK, NetBeans, and iText. It has been a while since I have made a Java Applet, or App for that matter, so it may take me a bit to get to where I can test this.

Thanks for the information. I will let you know how it goes.

Josh

Josh Reinert
Web Developer / EDI Developer
United Furniture Industries

j.reinert
Registered: Mar 15 2011
Posts: 7
Hi Nick,

I think I am over complicating things. After re-thinking my dilemma I think I may have come up with a better option. But again I don't know much about Adobe so I am not even sure if it has this capability. Is it possible to load a PDF that populates some default values based on an XML file (or any type of readable file)? If so, how would I go about doing this? I am assuming that I need to use LiveCycle instead of Acrobat, or can it be done through Acrobat easier?

Thanks,

Josh

Josh Reinert
Web Developer / EDI Developer
United Furniture Industries

j.reinert
Registered: Mar 15 2011
Posts: 7
Accepted Answer
Hi Nick,

Thanks again for the info, I went a different route and got my problem fixed. I am going to post my issue that I was having and my solution, since I was searching for weeks and could never find any solutions. I had to use a LiveCycle and Acrobat to get the results I was looking for.

Thanks again,

Josh

Josh Reinert
Web Developer / EDI Developer
United Furniture Industries