Using PDF Forms to Insert Data
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Category: General Discussion
Forum Name: Classic ASP Discussion
Forum Description: Discussion on Active Server Pages (Classic ASP).
URL: https://forums.webwiz.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=15629
Printed Date: 30 March 2026 at 7:51am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.08 - https://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Using PDF Forms to Insert Data
Posted By: Misty
Subject: Using PDF Forms to Insert Data
Date Posted: 28 June 2005 at 1:57am
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There was a job ad for a developer position. The candidate in this position must be able to design PDF Forms and use such forms to collect data to be inserted into a database. The developer also must be able to design forms to retrieve data from the database to allow people to modify records. The developer will use ASP and SQL.
I am puzzled about this because I didn't think that you could design PDF forms in a way to allow people to fill out online. I thought that all of PDF forms had to be printed out. Is it possible to design PDF forms like the description above? If so, how?
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Replies:
Posted By: dpyers
Date Posted: 28 June 2005 at 5:56am
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Adobe is pretty heavily into document management. PDF Forms have been around for quite a while. They're XML based now. Programming them is not trivial - lol. ------------- 
Lead me not into temptation... I know the short cut, follow me. |
Posted By: dfrancis
Date Posted: 28 June 2005 at 9:32am
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DP??? Do you have experience with this?
Hosted PDF form to XML and/or SQL?
Please PM me with a ball park price for PDF form creation, data handling (SQL table) and secure retrieval. I understand... ball park. But are we talking 10s 100s 1000s of $$ ? My interest is for a HTTPS mortgage loan application.
Also, interested in well commented code (and how to/walk through) so I don't have to pay you to do it again.
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Posted By: dpyers
Date Posted: 28 June 2005 at 2:17pm
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Nothing direct. It's a server side thing and I did an install on some
servers of the non-xml version. The forms code was an extension to the
pdf language with a gui over it. Needed some tweaking. Pricing at the time was a few grand up front and then yearly licensing. You can probably get current pricing at the adobe site but they may have it bundled with something else now. You may have to get some sort of core doc management product and then get forms as an add-on. I've done mortgage apps before in java/jsp and in asp for both banks and for mortgage broker companies. You really... really... need to have pop-up help available next to each question. I don't know how well the current PDF Forms handles that. The old version wasn't good at it at all. There's also a lot of cheap "helper-mini-apps" available (e.g. what's my expected credit score, monthy payment, etc.) that you'd want to be able to pop-up from the application. The other thing to look at is session contiuation. People don't fill out a mortgage app in one session. I kept forms info in a session object and serailized it at the end of each page. People could go back to adjust data in other pages or come back tomorrow and pick up where they left off from. Either way, the forms needed to have the capability of being pre-filled from either the sesion object or from the db. Just as a note... Banks preferred/required running on Unix. Mortgage Brokers didn't care. -------------
Lead me not into temptation... I know the short cut, follow me. |
Posted By: dfrancis
Date Posted: 28 June 2005 at 4:51pm
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Thanks for the great reply. I'll find out more about the requirements next week. No matter what we do, the pop up helps will be integrated.
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