Adobe acrobat 7.0.5 sdk User Manual

Forms and the Acrobat SDK

You can save your form data in pure XML format, or, to take advantage of the rich 
functionality offered by the XFA plug-in, you can save your forms in the XML Data Package 
format (XDP).

The XDP format allow you to package units of PDF content within a surrounding XML 
container, and is thus considered an XML-based companion to PDF. The advantage of this 
format is that it provides XML parsers direct access to the XML form-data subassembly of 
the PDF document. 

For more information, see the Acrobat JavaScript Scripting Guide.

Using Acrobat JavaScript, form data can be saved in either FDF or XFDF format in a separate 
file which can subsequently be used in the next step within your workflow. This approach 
minimizes the file size to just the amount needed to store your data, thus decreasing 
network traffic and processing time for the next step in the workflow.

For more information, see the Acrobat JavaScript Scripting Guide.

Once you’ve collected PDF form data in FDF or XML format from multiple users, you can 
organize the form data into a comma-delimited spreadsheet file (CSV). After exporting the 
form data to a CSV file, you can work with the data in a spreadsheet application, such as 
Microsoft Excel.

You can also save form data as a tab-delimited file. Tab-delimited files can also be imported 
using 

 object methods.

Data from various attachments can be imported into an XML or XFA-based document, and 
submitted to a server for processing.

Since images are their own fields, they can be exported in any of the standard image types 
using the 

 object’s 

 method. If the image is to be used again, it 

can be imported as an icon in any of the standard formats: BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, or TIFF.