Example of the Use of an Interactive PDF Form

Use

This animated infographic is an interesting example of how the format can be used to compare two similar things and highlight their differences. Here we see Adobe’s vector graphics editor Illustrator side by side with Adobe’s raster graphics editor Photoshop. If you’re using a layout program like Adobe InDesign, you’ll have more options for quality and size, which you can tweak in Acrobat. Otherwise, use this guide for other options for making PDFs. To make a PDF in InDesign, go to File Export, or hit Command + E in your file. From this window, choose a location to save your file. The interactive pdf will have popup text that appears when the mouse hovers over certain areas that we specify. For this example we are going to use a simple holiday itinerary map and create some text popups that appear when we hover or rollover them.

The following example demonstrates the use of an interactive PDF form. It also explains the view structure, the required context structure, and the data binding of the UI element properties to the context structure defined at design time for the PDF form layout. In addition, it contains a procedure for creating and designing an interactive PDF form using the Adobe Designer. For information about the use of Adobe Designer, refer to the online help of this tool.

This example uses a simple PDF document containing two field objects of the type Text Field that display the last name and first name of a person. The PDF document retrieves the required data from the view context. The document is saved as example.pdf on the local hard disk using the Submit button. The source code for the storage is contained in the onActionSubmit method of the controller implementation. For more information, refer to the chapter below: Controller Implementation.

For a description of the individual UI element properties, refer to the Web Dynpro InteractiveForm API documentation.

Prerequisites

You have created a Web Dypro application and also a view (in this example called TestInteractivePDFForm) within the Web Dynpro component into which you want to insert the InteractiveForm UI element. For a detailed description of the procedure for creating Web Dynpro projects, Web Dynpro components, the context structure as well as the layout of the view, see the tutorial Creating Your First Web Dynpro Application.

You will find the system prerequisites in the Adobe library.

Procedure

Creating the view layout in which you want to display the PDF document

...

1.Insert the InteractiveForm UI element with the ID InteractiveForm2 into the view.
Choose Insert Child in the Outline window of the RootUIElementContainer in the context menu (right mouse button). Then select the value InteractiveForm in the dropdown list box. The TextView UI element with the ID DefaultTextView is used to label the PDF document and is automatically generated during view creation. In this example, the value Show interactive form is assigned to the textproperty of this UI element.

Creating the Context Structure

...

1.Create the context nodeAdressNode.

2.Create the context attributesFirstNameandName.

3.Create the context attributepdfSourceas a root node element. It contains the PDF document at runtime. This context attribute must be of the typebinary.

4.Create the supply function fillNode.

Context structure

Properties of the value node AdressNode

Properties of the value attribute FirstName

Properties of the value attribute Name

Properties of the root node attribute pdfSource

If you define the context structure first after creating the view, you can bind the UI element properties to the corresponding context elements directly after the insertion of the UI element into the view.

Creating the actions check and submit

Note that binding the events check and submit is required for the availability of the corresponding pushbuttons in the Web Dynpro tab of the Adobe Designer library. Refer to the screenshot in the chapter entitled Design of the PDF Template.

Data Binding

...

1.Define data binding of the UI element properties (see the following screenshot).

2.Binding the actions

Controller Implementation

The following source code contains only the most important parts of the controller implementation:

//Implementation of the supply function fillNode.The code is called when the view is initialized.

publicvoidfillNode(IPrivateTestViewInteractivePDFForm.IAddressNodeNodenode,IPrivateTestViewInteractivePDFForm.IContextElementparentElement)

{

//@@begin fillNode(IWDNode,IWDNodeElement)

IPrivateTestViewInteractivePDFForm.IAddressNodeElementelement=wdContext.nodeAddressNode().createAddressNodeElement();

element.setFirstName('John');

element.setName('Smith');

wdContext.nodeAddressNode().bind(element);

//@@end

}

..

..

//Implementation of the event submit

publicvoidonActionsubmit(com.sap.tc.webdynpro.progmodel.api.IWDCustomEventwdEvent)

{

//@@begin onActionsubmit(ServerEvent)

IPrivateTestViewInteractivePDFForm.IContextElementcontextElement=wdContext.currentContextElement();

byte[]bytes=contextElement.getPdfSource();

try

{

Filefile=newFile('C:tempexample.pdf');

FileOutputStreamos=newFileOutputStream(file);

os.write(bytes);

os.close();

}

catch(IOExceptione)

{

// do something

e.printStackTrace();

}

wdThis.wdGetAPI().getComponent().getMessageManager().reportSuccess('You have pressed Submit! FirstName is: '+wdContext.currentAddressNodeElement().getFirstName());

//@@end

}

After the data binding is completed, you can design the PDF document. Call the Adobe Designer to design and edit the InteractiveForm UI element by choosing Edit in the context menu of this UI element. The Adobe Designer opens in the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio. The template for the PDF document is provided within the body page. There you can insert the required standard objects, such as Text Field, using the tab Library and the drag and drop function. The Data View of the Adobe Designer provides the context node

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