There are many PDF forms available online that you may want to use as layouts for the report data. For example, government forms that your company is required to submit. You can use these downloaded PDF files as the report layouts, supplying the XML data at runtime to fill in the report fields.
Some of these forms already have form fields defined, some do not. See Determining If a PDF Has Form Fields Defined if you are unsure. If the PDF form already has fields defined, then you can use one of the following methods to match the form field names to the data field names:
Use Adobe Acrobat Professional to rename the fields in the document to match the names of the elements in the XML data file. See Using a Predefined PDF Form as a Layout by Renaming the Form Fields.
Use BI Publisher's Data Model Editor to rename the XML element names in the data file to match the field names in the PDF form. For information, see Structuring Data in Data Modeling Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher.
If the form fields are not already defined in the downloaded PDF, then you must create them. See Adding Markup to the Template for instructions on inserting the form field placeholders.
Follow these steps to determine if a PDF has form fields defined and to get a list of the field names.
Open the document in Adobe Acrobat Reader or Adobe Acrobat Professional.
Click Highlight Fields. Form fields that exist in the document are highlighted.
document-repeat-elementname — The PDF form field, document-repeat-elementname, is added in the pdf template. The FormProcessor picks up this field at the beginning of its process and switches to the document repeat engine if document-repeat-elementname is set.
You can use a PDF form as a template for another form.
To use a predefined PDF form as a layout:
The comb of characters option for a PDF form field in Adobe Acrobat spreads the text evenly across the width of the text field.
Use this option when the form field requires the characters to be entered in specific positions, as the Routing number field shown in the following figure:
To use this feature, perform the following:
When you run the report, the characters comprising the value for the routing field will be spread across the text field as shown in the following figure:
The following figure shows how the data will display in the field when the data for the routing field does not contain the full nine characters and the Alignment option is set to left: