Use Visualforce and Apex to Populate PDF Forms

By jesse lorenz | Published: December 23, 2008

Does your company's business process involve filling out PDF forms? Perhaps something like IRS Form W-4?

If so, you may be interested to learn that in addition to creating PDF documents from scratch, you can also use Visualforce and Apex to automate the process of populating third-party PDF forms. Ron Hess and I recently collaborated on a project that does just that. It's a straightforward process where all you really need to do is generate an XML file that follows Adobe's XFDF format.

If you're interested to learn more, we've documented an example that creates an XFDF file which is then used to populate a simple PDF form. Read the XFDF wiki article to learn more.

 

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  • Jason

    The link to this article died. Any chance it could be fixed?

  • gt

    I’ve tried to get to this article as well using my DFC account and I get a permission error stating that I must belong to one of the groups (*) or (user). Can you send me the article? Or verify that the link is functioning?

  • Rolan

    Hi, can you please send me the article or explain more about the way how to handle third-party pdf?

  • http://www.softsquare.biz Andi Giri

    Ron,
    I have been unable to access the XFDF wiki article. Please send that to me via email to asgiri@softsquare.biz and post it on the Wiki with appropriate permissions,
    Andi Giri

  • Ron Hess

    thanks for pointing this out, the link is fixed.

  • http://www.ChiragMehta.info/ Chirag Mehta

    grt article!