Executing "pdftk my-pdf-form.pdf dump_data_fields" shows nothing

Question

I am using the tool pdftk, I have got a editable PDF and I saw in the documentation the arguments dump_data_fields should show me the fields of the form.

I use this command (windows): pdftk my-pdf-form.pdf dump_data_fields

I am using the pdftk server edition.

Documentation: https://www.pdflabs.com/docs/pdftk-man-page/

The point is that the PDF is editable, it has got fields to write with Adobe PDF Viewer.

Musso

Answer 1

The problem was that the pdf was created by Adobe LiveCycle Designer and was save as "Adobe Dynamic XML From". The solution is saving the file as "Adobe Static PDF Form". Possibly pdftk cannot deal with that livecycle files.

Musso

Answer 2

I thought the accepted answer might have been my solution, but it turned out the PDF document I was working with actually didn't have form fields set up. If the document looks like a form, but the form fields are not greyed out, then no fields will be detected.

The only way I could solve this was to open the document in Acrobat Pro and add the fields via its form tool. Then pdftk worked fine.

Halle

Answer 3

If you are facing the problem of the OP within the Windows environment, follow the below instructions.

1- Open the GUI PDFtk program. (You may also use the cli if you wish)

2- Click on the "Add PDF..." button and search for your fill-ready PDF file.

3- Scroll down to the bottom of the GUI PDFtk window and click on "Create PDF..." without adding or changing any settings.

4- Save the new fill-ready PDF file with a new name to a directory of your choice

5- Finally, issue the Windows version of the dump_data_fields command using cmd, like so.(notice how "output" is used instead of ">")

6- Open the text file "fields.txt", and you will see the field names. Example shown below.

Vespid

Answer 4

I don't know if this helps but I wrote some C# code to count the data fields in a document. Please see the following functions.

1. Here we pass the file path to a file and it counts the total number of fields in the document.

   public int countDataFields(string inputFile)
   {
       int fieldCount = 0;
       string arguments = "";
   
       using (Process newProcess = new Process())
       {
           arguments = inputFile + " dump_data_fields";
           newProcess.StartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo("pdftk ", arguments);
           newProcess.StartInfo.RedirectStandardInput = true;  
           newProcess.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
           newProcess.StartInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;
           newProcess.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
           newProcess.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = false;
           newProcess.Start();
   
           while (!newProcess.StandardOutput.EndOfStream)
           {
               var line = newProcess.StandardOutput.ReadLine();
               fieldCount = fieldCount + 1;
           }
   
           Console.WriteLine("Field Counts: " + fieldCount);
           newProcess.WaitForExit();
       }
   
       return fieldCount;
   }
   

2. In case you want to pass a file as a stream through the standard input

   public void countDataFieldsWhenFilePassedAsBinaryStream(string file1)
   {
       int fieldCount = 0;
       // initialize the binary reader and open the binary reader with the file stream of the incoming file.
       BinaryReader binaryReader = new BinaryReader(File.Open(file1, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read));
   
       //create a buffer array of 1024.
       byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
   
       using (Process newProcess = new Process())
       {
           newProcess.StartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo("pdftk");
           newProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = @" - dump_data_fields";
           newProcess.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
           newProcess.StartInfo.RedirectStandardInput = true;
           newProcess.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
           newProcess.Start();
   
           int bytesRead = 0;
   
           // we are reading the binary files in chunks of 1024 bytes
           // we loop through as long as the byte read is greater than 0
           while ((bytesRead = binaryReader.Read(buffer, 0, 1024)) > 0)
           {
               //  we write the standard input bytes into the buffer.
               newProcess.StandardInput.BaseStream.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
           }
   
           //closing the binaryReader
           binaryReader.Close();
   
           //closing the standard input stream
           newProcess.StandardInput.Close();
   
           // here we are going to loop through the standard output stream till the eof. we are counting the
   
           while (newProcess.StandardOutput.EndOfStream == false)
           {
               //read the line;
               newProcess.StandardOutput.ReadLine();
               //increment the counter
               fieldCount++;;
           }
   
           // console writeline the field count.
           Console.WriteLine(fieldCount);
   
           newProcess.WaitForExit();
       }// end of using
   }// end of function convertPDFToStandardInput
   

Hope this helps :)

Circulation