Q: I need to create an application to use with SharePoint in which the
user will have to print multiple contracts for a doctor. The contracts
will be in PDF format with fields to be filled in. he user will open
the item in Sharepoint of the doctor, select the contracts to be
printed and click print. The application will have to populate the
fields in each PDF based on the current item, save those PDF file in a
SharePoint library and then print those files.
So the main is about auto populating PDF files for the user. The other
part is that we do not currently have a PDF editor so I was thinking
that we could use the SilverDox product for that part.
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A: In case you need to work directly with PDF (e.g. manipulate PDF,
fill-in forms, etc), you would need to use PDFNet SDK. For example of
how to programmatically fill-in a PDF form, please take a look at the
following samples:
InteractiveForms: http://www.pdftron.com/pdfnet/samplecode.html#InteractiveForms
FDF: http://www.pdftron.com/pdfnet/samplecode.html#FDF
For an example of how to print a PDF, please take a look at PDFPrint
sample:
http://www.pdftron.com/pdfnet/samplecode.html#PDFPrint
For viewing PDF files you could use PDFViewCtrl (as shown in PDFView
sample), however this is a WinForms control and it could not be used
across different browsers. PDFViewCtrl is better suited for building
desktop applications.
As an alternative, you could convert PDF to Silverlight for preview
and implement form filling functionality using custom annotations.
PDFNet can be used to extract the location of all form fields, their
names, initial values, etc. This information would be used to position
text boxes (i.e. form fields) on top DocumentViewer. Your Silverlight
application would then submit form data to the server which would use
PDFNet to fill-in a PDF form and print a document. The upcoming
versions of SilverDox Publisher will include forms data within
Silverlight XOD.