Submission - no fields coming through

Does anything come through on the server side? Any bytes in the HTTP Request body? Have you tried other submission formats? Is the MimeType set in the Header?

What happens when you simply export data from the form to the local drive? Does the FDF come through then?

Another test to try, is to submit with email from the form. Is the FDF attached to the email, and is it correct?

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php[/url]

Thom, thanks for your reply,

I will get answers to all of these and let you know

Alex

Ok here goes:

I submitted the PDF with a mailto: , twice - once submitting as HTML and once submitting as FDF.
The FDF was populated and correct, while the HTML was blank

When submitting to a script on the webserver, HTML comes through entirely blank, while as FDF comes through with a key of POSTDATA, but on value for that key.

We do all of our submissions as HTML - and read in values as normal CGI.

Thom, what is the best way to get the full http request bytes, I am using a perl script with CGI code to get the keys and values, not sure how to go about getting all of that

The "CONTENT_LENGTH" and "CONTENT_TYPE" are standard CGI variables. The FDF comes through as POST data so "$ENV(CONTENT_LENGTH)" sould be greater than 0 and "$ENV(CONTENT_TYPE)" should be something like "application/adobe.vnd.fdf:uft-8"

The web server reads and parses the HTTP request header. which is why you have the query string, and all the other header info, available in the environment variables. But it stops reading the HTTP Request at the top of the body bytes. So anything you read from STDIN will be body bytes. I'd suggest reading the entire body into a single variable.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php[/url]

Hi Thom,

Thanks for the help -

I modified the script to write everything from STDIN to a text file.

When testing with a PDF submitting as FDF on a Windows machine with Adobe Reader 9, the http request contains the FDF entirely.

When testing with the combination of Adobe Reader 9 and Mac OSX 10.5 - the file is completely blank, as if it is not sending any information at all. It does however make a connection as a the script does run and the blank text file is created.


We have received this query from multiple clients with this setup so I am leaning towards this being a bug and not settings, your thoughts?

I agree that this is a bug. I think you've been pretty thurough about the testing, which leaves little doubt that Acrobat 9 on Mac has a big issue submitting FDF.

But Just to be sure, you don't have it set to submit as an HTTP GET? When submitting FDF, Acrobat is suppose to ignore the bGet parameter and do a POST, but you never know.

Have you tried submitting from both, a PDF displayed in the browser, and stand-alone Acrobat?

Acrobat and Reader?

Have you tried submitting other data formats, like XML?

I'll see what I can do to make Adobe listen. The answers to the above questions will help with the bug report. But since you have the actual document and code for testing, you should bug them as well.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php[/url]

hi Thom,

I have actually tested with bGet as well along with submitting as HTML (we use HTML primarily in fact, but as POST)

I will try within a browser as well next.

I haven't tried XML but will do that as well.

Thanks a lot for your help, I did submit a bug today - with all the information from this testing, thanks for the tips on what to test.

I haven't had much luck previously with support though - not really sure which departments to contact.

Again, I appreciate the effort.

Alex

I've submitted a bug report as well. Apparently there is a problem reproducing it. Could you tell me what hardware you are using, PPC or Intel? Have you had anyone else (on a MAC) try to submit to your server script? What were thier results?

Thanks,
Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php[/url]

Hi Thom,

The MAC we are testing with is Intel based.


We have had multiple complaints from our clients not being able to submit data to us. The symptoms were exactly what I could reproduce, a connection being made but no data.

I'd say there have been at least 20 or so different end users in the past 2 months.

Unfortunately we only have one mac at the offices that we can test with - hopefully there is someone else that wouldn't mind helping out with testing?

Excellent, this info helps

I've run into the same issue, and the only way I've been able to get it to work is ensure that Adobe Reader 9 is opened in a browser. It seems the standalone version is the only one with the empty submission bug.

Hi Nixopax,

What is the best way to get a PDF to open in a browser on a Max (bearing in mind I'm a PC user and have to pass these instructions along). Does Safari have to be used?

I have word back from my developer who has a Mac that the file seems to be opening in Safari but is using Adobe 8 instead of Adobe 9 - is there anyway to change the application type in the browser?

There is a preference in Acrobat Reader for displaying PDFs loaded over the web into a browser window. You can also load a local PDF directly into the browser from the browsers URL line, use "file://...." or there is probably a file open as well on the browser.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php[/url]

The problem is with MacOSX 10.5 (Leopard/Intel)

I have a PDF form where I submit XFDF.
From 10.4 (Tiger) I get the XFDF Xml file in my C# .NET 2.0 IHttpHandler (IIS)

When I try to submit the PDF form from 10.5 (Leopard), I have a breakpoint in my C# .NET 2.0 IHttpHandler and it reaches the breakpoint but context.Request.ContentLength is zero

Do you need a sample C# .NET 2.0 IHttpHandler to test with?

Yes, that would be great. The Adobe debuggers cannot recreate this problem and in fact closed out the bug report as "Unable to Reproduce". Any infomation you have would help if we can get them to see that there really is a problem. Send me the script and the exact operating conditions for the form.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php[/url]

Here's a zip file that contains a C# .NET application created with Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition. This is a Microsoft free application.

I've also included a TestForm.pdf.

You'll need Acrobat Professional to change the submit form IP address to your local IP address of the TestFDF C# web application.

http://www.tidalmindstudios.com/AppPDF.zip

Hope this helps the Acrobat debuggers in solving this problem.

Again, thanks to everyone for the help - I'm glad I'm not the only one experiencing this problem :)

Hi Thom, did Adobe get back to you with anything else, or anything else I can supply to assist?

No New News;) I'll give'm another ping

thanks :)

in more testing we have found that when opening a PDF with Adobe Professional 8.0 installed (in Safari) the PDF submits correctly.

When uninstalling Professional suite and relying on Adobe 9 Reader only it does not even make a connection to my server (this may be a product of bad testing however, but I will confirm when I can)

Update today: My Mac user downloaded the latest security update and then tried submitting from a browser - this now works, but standalone reader still doesn't.

So it's a partial solution for my clients at least for now.

Update - the latest version on Mac has this problem fixed, closed.

Woo Hoo!! Finally