Handling data submitted from a form

This Quick Start describes how to use the Forms service to create a process to use XDP data submitted from a rendered PDF form. The XDP data can be saved to a database, sent to another service for processing, or manipulated and saved for later processing. For more information about the Forms service, see Services Reference for Adobe LiveCycle ES3.

When using the Forms service, data is submitted as XDP data. The resulting data is converted to XML data (without the XDP data). In the form design, the type of data submitted can be configured. (See Designer Help .) For example, an organization has a process that uses a common PDF form that is rendered to applicants to submit loan requests in North America. Separate groups in the organization handle the loan requests based on the country as follows:

• Applicants who reside in the United States have loan requests handled by Group A.

• Applicants who reside in Canada have the loan requests handled by Group B.

In a web browser, applicants fill a PDF form that is rendered by the Forms service. The country that an applicant resides in is determined by the Country field. Users select the country in which they reside using a drop-down list. The drop-down list contains the values Canada and United States.

An application, named handleSubmissionApp, implements the service for the organization. When a user clicks the Submit button in the PDF form, XDP data is sent to a Java servlet. The servlet invokes the handleSubmissionApp service. The service uses the Forms to process the XDP data and in a separate step and saves it to an XML file. The XDP data from an applicant in the United States is saved to the network location \\GroupA_US\loan.xml. The XDP data from an applicant in Canada is saved to the network location \GROUP_B_CAN\loan.xml. To keep the loan request data files unique, a unique numeric string is appended to end of the filename. For example, loan1.xml is created if the loan.xml file exists at the network location.

The handleSubmissionApp application includes a process, named handleFormSubmission, that includes the following items:

• An input document variable, named xdpXML, that stores the XDP data submitted from the servlet when the Submit button is clicked.

• An output document variable, named outputXML, that stores the XML data.

• A processFormSubmission operation (Forms service) that processes the submitted data from a PDF form.

• Two Write Document operations (File Utilities service) that save the XML data as document values. The location to save the XML depends on whether the applicant selected Canada or United States in the drop-down list.

• A conditional route that determines the next operation to execute. When the value of the Country field is United States, the Write Document operation executes; otherwise, the Write Document2 operation executes.

The process diagram for the handleFormSubmission process looks like the following illustration:

The following text shows relevant parts of the XDP data for understanding this Quick Start. The data is stored in the <xfa:datasets> element and each element in the XML tree can be accessed in the process. In the example that follows, the applicant resides in the United States:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>  
    <?xfa generator="XFA2_4" APIVersion="3.0.8262.0"?>  
    <xdp:xdp xmlns:xdp="http://ns.adobe.com/xdp/" timeStamp="2009-11-27T19:16:38Z" uuid="1fe71528-34a5-43df-8ad1-7f08126b3698"> 
    ...  
    <xfa:datasets xmlns:xfa="http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-data/1.0/"> 
        <xfa:data> 
            <LoanApp> 
                <Name>Akira Tanaka</Name> 
                <LoanAmount>100000</LoanAmount>  
                <PhoneOrEmail>atanaka@sampleorganization.com</PhoneOrEmail>  
                <Country>United States</Country> 
                <ApprovalStatus>PENDING APPROVAL</ApprovalStatus> 
            </LoanApp> 
        ...  
        <xfa:data> 
        ... 
</xdp:xdp>

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