pdf-set-form-values.cc

#include <qpdf/QPDF.hh>
#include <qpdf/QPDFAcroFormDocumentHelper.hh>
#include <qpdf/QPDFPageDocumentHelper.hh>
#include <qpdf/QPDFWriter.hh>
#include <qpdf/QUtil.hh>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <iostream>

static char const* whoami = nullptr;

void
usage()
{
    std::cerr << "Usage: " << whoami << " infile.pdf outfile.pdf value" << std::endl
              << "Set the value of all text fields to a specified value" << std::endl;
    exit(2);
}

int
main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    whoami = QUtil::getWhoami(argv[0]);

    if (argc != 4) {
        usage();
    }

    char const* infilename = argv[1];
    char const* outfilename = argv[2];
    char const* value = argv[3];

    // This is a contrived example that just goes through a file page by page and sets the value of
    // any text fields it finds to a fixed value as given on the command line. The purpose here is
    // to illustrate use of the helper classes around interactive forms.

    try {
        QPDF qpdf;
        qpdf.processFile(infilename);

        // We will iterate through form fields by starting at the page level and looking at each
        // field for each page. We could also call QPDFAcroFormDocumentHelper::getFormFields to
        // iterate at the field level, but doing it as below illustrates how we can map from
        // annotations to fields.

        QPDFAcroFormDocumentHelper afdh(qpdf);
        for (auto const& page: QPDFPageDocumentHelper(qpdf).getAllPages()) {
            // Get all widget annotations for each page. Widget annotations are the ones that
            // contain the details of what's in a form field.
            for (auto& annot: afdh.getWidgetAnnotationsForPage(page)) {
                // For each annotation, find its associated field. If it's a text field, set its
                // value.
                QPDFFormFieldObjectHelper ffh = afdh.getFieldForAnnotation(annot);
                if (ffh.getFieldType() == "/Tx") {
                    // Set the value. Passing false as the second parameter prevents qpdf from
                    // setting /NeedAppearances to true (but will not turn it off if it's already
                    // on), so we call generateAppearance after setting the value. You may or may
                    // not want to do this depending on whether the appearance streams generated by
                    // qpdf are good enough for your purposes. For additional details, please see
                    // comments in QPDFFormFieldObjectHelper.hh for this method.
                    ffh.setV(value, false);
                    ffh.generateAppearance(annot);
                }
            }
        }

        // Write out a new file
        QPDFWriter w(qpdf, outfilename);
        w.setStaticID(true); // for testing only
        w.write();
    } catch (std::exception& e) {
        std::cerr << whoami << " processing file " << infilename << ": " << e.what() << std::endl;
        exit(2);
    }

    return 0;
}