Creating fillable PDFs

Question

I'd like to create a LaTeX document that when rendered into PDF, has forms that can be filled out using Adobe Reader or other such programs. Then I'd like to be able to extract the data. I deliberately would like to avoid using Acrobat for all the usual reasons (non-free, need different versions for different platforms etc).

Can this be done ?

Answer 1

The hyperref package provides a method to create PDF forms. The way I understand it, the form is either to be printed or to be transmitted to a webserver like a HTML form.

Here a small example:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}

\begin{Form}[action={http://your-web-server.com/path/receiveform.cgi}]
\begin{tabular}{l}
    \TextField{Name} \\\\
    \CheckBox[width=1em]{Check} \\\\
    \Submit{Submit}\\
\end{tabular}
\end{Form}


\end{document}

Gives:

Answer 2

Here is some code that I use to create forms that can be either printed and filled out with a pen or filled out electronically in a PDF viewer. When printed, the form provides a line for each form field. Like Martin Scharrer's solution I'm using the hyperref package. The tricky bit was to define an input field of a given length (here textwidth minus 4 cm). It required to override the \LayoutTextField hook.

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{article}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} 
\usepackage[pdftex]{hyperref}

\newdimen\longline
\longline=\textwidth\advance\longline-4cm

\def\LayoutTextField#1#2{#2} % override default in hyperref

\def\lbl#1{\hbox to 4cm{#1\dotfill\strut}}%
\def\labelline#1#2{\lbl{#1}\vbox{\hbox{\TextField[name=#1,width=#2]{\null}}\kern2pt\hrule}}

\def\q#1{\hbox to \hsize{\labelline{#1}{\longline}}\vskip1.4ex}

\begin{document}
  \begin{Form}
    \q{First Name}
    \q{Last Name}
    \q{Email}
   \end{Form}
 \end{document}

In a PDF viewer each line becomes a form field.

Answer 3

I've used the eforms package, which is used by DANTE for their membership form (which of course I can't now locate in .tex format!). You'll probably have to download and unpack eforms from CTAN yourself, as it's not in TeX Live (unpack eforms, insdljs and taborder, all in the eforms bundle). A short example from a registration form I've done:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[pdftex]{eforms}

% From DANTE's registration form!

\newcounter{infoLineNum}
\setcounter{infoLineNum}{0}
\newcommand{\infoInput}[2][4in]{%
  \stepcounter{infoLineNum}%
  \makebox[0pt][l]{%
    \kern 4 pt
    \raisebox{.75ex}
      {\textField[\W0\BC{}\BG{}\TU{#2}]{name\theinfoLineNum}{#1}{12bp}}%
  }
    \dotfill
}

\begin{document}
    \begin{tabular}{lp{4in}}
   Title                 & \infoInput{Title}\\[6pt]
   First name            & \infoInput{Firstname}\\[6pt]
   Last name             & \infoInput{Surname}\\[6pt]
   E-mail address        & \infoInput{Email}\\[6pt]
   Dietary requirements  & \infoInput{Dietary}\\[6pt]
\end{tabular}

\begin{tabular}{ll}
  Student (\pounds60) 
    & \raisebox{.75ex}{\radioButton{RegType}{10bp}{10bp}{Student}} 
      \\[6pt]
  Academic/post-doc (\pounds120)
    & \raisebox{.75ex}{\radioButton{RegType}{10bp}{10bp}{Academic}} 
      \\[6pt]
  Industrial (\pounds180)
    & \raisebox{.75ex}{\radioButton{RegType}{10bp}{10bp}{Industrial}} 
      \\[6pt]
\end{tabular}

\end{document}

This gives 'type in' boxes for the text areas and 'tick' boxes for the choices.

I'm not sure what happens about saving form data: according to Adobe Reader it can't be saved in this form. I've never actually seen a PDF form that can have the data saved, so whether even Acrobat can do this I do not know.

Answer 4

action= submission dangers

https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/14844/19083 works, but the proposed method is:

• dangerous:
  • user may submit form twice and not notice it
  • no authentication, so a malicious user could submit it multiple times
• not portable: Evince 3.24.0 (default reader Ubuntu 17.04) doesn't implement HTTP submission (tested with nc localhost 8000).

I would recommend instead that you remove the action and submit button as in:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\begin{document}
\begin{Form}
\begin{tabular}{l}
    \TextField{Name} \\
    \CheckBox[width=1em]{Check} \\
\end{tabular}
\end{Form}
\end{document}

and use a programmatic method to extract the PDF data as mentioned at:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3984003/how-to-extract-pdf-fields-from-a-filled-out-form-in-python
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21009608/how-to-export-pdf-form-fields-to-xml-automatically

and then ask users to upload the PDF if you are using a web server.

I have tested Python's pdfminer, and it just worked, outputting:

Name: asdf
Check: /Yes

Note that you have to save a new PDF first after modifying the fields with Evince.

Answer 5

I agree with Christian Lindig's answer. It looks good.

The problem is that there are red border around the fields. Guys in this community do gave some suggestions on how to remove that. To me, the simplest one is

\def\labelline#1#2{\lbl{#1}\vbox{\hbox{\TextField[name=#1,width=#2,bordercolor=white]{\null}}\kern2pt\hrule}} 

Just change the color of the border. Remember to include the xcolor package.

Maybe I should write this in the comments, but I am new here.

Answer 6

We can search it at CTAN like this: https://www.ctan.org/topic/form-fillin

• for­mu­lar (it will create fields to be filled by hand or computer. I did not like because it doesn't have checkbox) check the manual

• hyperref - manual

The others results were not nice.

I will try hyperref later.