Online PDF forms

[mykiesee]

I figured if anyone could help it would be WebProWorld guys and gals.

I have a client who has his loan applications online as pdf files. I have taken these files into Acrobat and added text fields and checkboxes where appropriate so that customers can fill out the applications online, print them, and mail them to my client. Example can be found
here.

What he wants is to be able for the customer to send the form to his email address, securely, so that he can print out the form exactly as is. He wants it sent to his email address so that the form would look exactly as if the customer had snail-mailed it to him.

Is there a way to do this? If so, how? If not, any other alternatives or work-arounds?

[Easywebdev]

There is a libpdf library available for php that allows for the construction of pdf files on the fly. It would take a lot of work and is painstakingly slow to generate your base template but once you have it in place then a user could fill in an online form and your php script could take over and place the data into your pdf layout and mail it.
You would of course need to be hosted on a server that has libpdf installed. Most hosts will install it if asked.

Looking at the pdf then an online form for all that would take a lot of validation coding not to mention the basic template.

Another alternative would be to offer the form for download, the user fills in the information and scans it and can then email it as an attachment.

Some others may have better suggestions.

[paulhiles]

There seem to be a number of commercial products that cater for your requirements, but I'm guessing you'd like to have a stab at your own home-grown solution?

The following link on Planet PDF looks promising, I've not tried it myself, but there are a couple of methods suggested in the article (one using ASP).

One fairly simple workaround would be to use the PDF form controls (within Acrobat) to add a submit button and have its action set to transmit the formdata to a PHP/ASP mailer script, which could then process the submitted data and email the results to the recipient.

Paul

[mykiesee]

Thanks for your help guys. I understand about mail forms and such. Just that the client really wants it to come out on his end the same as it looks on the front end. That way he just has to slide it into a file folder with all his other mortgage apps after he picks it off the printer.

Guess he'll just have to be happy with the customer filling it out online and either printing and snail-mailing it to him or scanning and emailing.

Again, thanks for your help.

[paulhiles]

If your client doesn't mind spending some money, then CutePDF Express could probably fit the bill. However retailing at $249 for a single form, it's certainly not cheap!

Paul