Dynamically Generate Editable PDF

[kutchbhi]

Hello

 

I am using fpdf to generate pdf files based on certain csv files. Now the client wants certain fields of the generated pdf file to be 'interactive' .

Is this possible ? Googling about editable (interactive pdf's) only confused me . any help ?

 

 btw by interactive I mean fields that can be typed into directly by the client and then saved into the pdf .

[Psycho]

Yes, it is possible, but probably not with fpdf. I don't have any experience with fpdf but I have extensive experience with dynamic PDF creation via a browser application. In a prior company we provided a web form for the user to enter data for a specific document. Once submitted, the back end would utilize PostScript to merge the static content with the content the the user entered to generate a PDF using the Acrobat engine. That allows a huge amount of flexibility, and I'm sure it would allow the user of editable fields to be added to the final PDF since it is using the Acrobat engine - but was not something that we needed. That is probably something that is well beyond what you need. Not to mention, it would require you to learn several new technologies and the cost would be prohibitive.

 

But, I have some ideas you could look into:

 

First, see if there are any third party tools that allow you to create a PDF with editable fields. There may be, but such a full-featured API will likely come with a cost. Plus it may require additional installs to the web server. If you are on a shared host, that may be an issue.

 

Second, see if you can find a utility to create PDFs that can utilize an existing PDF as a template. You could have a blank page with just the editable fields then add your variable content. However, if the editable fields are going to be variable in size and position this would not server your purpose.

 

Third, instead of an editable PFD, provide the users a web page to enter their content and then use that content, along with the CSV content, to generate the PDF