Introduction
Form Fields allow users to interactive with PDF file by filling in information or making selections, which can then be submitted for processing. The types of PDF form fields including text input field, check box, radio button, combo box, list box, and button. This tip will show how to create and fill such form fields in PDF programmatically in Java using
Free Spire.PDF for Java API.
Adding Dependencies
For maven projects, we could easily add dependencies to the Free Spire.PDF for Java API by adding the following code in pom.xml:
(The latest version of Free Spire.PDF for Java in maven repository can be found
here.)
For common Java projects, download the latest version of Free Spire.PDF for Java, (
download link), then add Spire.Pdf.jar from the lib folder into your project.
Using the code
The following table shows the form fields and the corresponding class in Free Spire.PDF for Java API:
Form Field | Class |
---|
Text input field | PdfTextBoxField |
Check box | PdfCheckBoxField |
List box | PdfListBoxField |
Combo box | PdfComboBoxField |
Radio button | PdfRadioButtonListField |
Button | PdfButtonField |
Creating form fields
To create a form field, we first need to create an instance of the corresponding class, and then add it to the form fields collection using the
add method of class
PdfFormFieldCollection.
Filling form fields
To fill form fields, we need to determine the types of the fields. Below example shows how to determine the types of form fields and fill the form fields with value.
Additional information
There are many more manipulations (such as change appearance, clone, delete, move to another location and add JavaScript) we could do with PDF form fields except that introduced above. If interested, you can give it a try by yourself.