I am trying to create a form that links to an Access database. I am using the library.custom.data drop down list object. I drop it on the palette and then from the data viewer drag and drop the field on top of the DD list field. The data file is only about 100 records and when I test the form and click on the drop down list field it only shows the first record. In fact that is all it does and I do not get the list of items to choose from.

What am I doing wrong?

Dwight,

The “Data Drop Down List” object provided in the Library palette’s Custom tab is designed to load all records from a data connection using a data node for the item text and another for the item value.

By dragging the data node onto the Data Drop Down List from the data connection in the Data View palette, you’re simply creating a binding between the Data Drop Down List (which is essentially a simple drop down list with some script in its Initialize event) and the data node in the data connection. The default behaviour of data bindings is to load the first record on form load in Acrobat.

What I suggest is to set the Data Drop Down List’s Default Binding property to Normal using the Object palette’s Binding tab and then modify the Initialize script so that it works with your data connection.

If you open the Script Editor palette (use the Window menu to locate it) and select the Initialize event (with the Data Drop Down List object selected on the canvas), you’ll see the script that’s used to load all values from specified columns in a specified data connection. Near the top, you’ll see the following statements:

var sDataConnectionName = "<value>";
var sColHiddenValue = "<value>";
var sColDisplayText = "<value>";

The idea here is to change the “<value>” entries with information that pertains to the data connection you’ve created. For instance, if it’s called “MyDataConnection” and contains an ID and a Name column, you might do the following to have the drop down list automatically populated with items which show the Name and have the ID set as their value:

var sDataConnectionName = “MyDataConnection”;
var sColHiddenValue = “ID”;
var sColDisplayText = “Name”;

Another solution — which doesn’t required any scripting, by the way — is to use the Dynamic Properties feature of Designer 7.1 to automatically populate a regular drop down list’s item list with values from a data connection.

Hi Stefan,

I am Newbie07 from the adobe designer forum and thanks for this turorial. All the controls, except for addnew() are working for me. I do not get any error while inserting the data, but the data never get inserted into the table.

Newbie07,

What exactly is happening when you attempt to use the xfa.sourceSet.{DataConnectionName}.addNew() function? Do you get an error message?

Have you looked at Designer’s Report palette while previewing and testing your form to see if any warnings/errors are listed there that may be related to updating/adding new records in the database?

Ricardo,

The way data connections to ODBC data sources work in XFA is that you’re expected to iterate through all records or display (report-style) all records at once. The only way to show/update only one specific record at any given time is to specify a very specific SQL query that produces zero or one records for the data connection.

What I’ve done with my “Selecting Specific Database Records”:http://blogs.adobe.com/formbuilder/2006/09/selecting_specific_database_records.html tutorial is show you how to change the SQL statement used by a data connection dynamically (i.e. at run-time with respect to other user selections).

The idea would be to follow that tutorial and allow the user to select enough information in order to build an SQL query that would produce one record and then update the second data connection’s SQL query such that only that specific record is subsequently available for viewing/editing in the form.

How to add data within two tables. I have use

xfa.sourceSet.DataConnection.addNew()

in a AddNew button. but this only adding just a table. I’ve also make a New Data Connection “DataConnection2″ to the second table.

How to solve this problem?

Yuda,

While it’s possible to define multiple data connections to ODBC data sources (typically database tables), only one may be active at any given time.

If you need to update data in two tables concurrently, I would suggest that you use an SQL statement as the definition for the data connection. This way, you can define an SQL statement that joins two or more tables together and cause data to be updated in multiple tables with a single active ODBC data connection.

Jan,

Unfortunately, I’m not an Access expert so I can’t give you a definite answer or procedure to follow but I do know that while Access supports SQL, it either doesn’t support the entire language set or doesn’t expose most of it by default.

I was able to find information on Create Table queries in Access which you may find useful in translating the code in the SQL file I provided into code that can be interpreted by Access in order to create the various tables you need.

I just started using Adobe LiveCycle designer to create an online competency test for a client. Everything is working well thus far with respect to filling out the test and emailing back to me for automotic grading using the XML data that has been submitted via email.

My client at this point has a concern regarding the PRINT option that is made available to the individual sending his/her results. My client does not wish to have the PRINT option available.

How can I create an “email to:” dialogue that only has the options for “Send data” or “Cancel” ??

Your advice would be most appreciated.

Regards,

Bob

Bob,

If I understand correctly, you’re basically wanting to by-pass the intermediate dialog that opens when the user clicks on an email submit button where the user must choose their email client or print the data.

This dialog can be by-passed by programmatically causing the data on the form to be submitted.

When the user clicks on an actual email submit button to submit the form’s data, Acrobat sees that as being a result of a user action (clicking on the button) and displays the intermediate dialog.

If you were to place a regular button on the form, make the actual email submit button invisible and then, in the regular button’s Click event, cause the email submit button’s Click event to be executed, you would then cause the form’s data to be submitted programmatically, resulting in a new email message with the data as an attachment to be displayed, having by-passed the intermediate dialog.

To execute the email submit button’s Click event from another button’s Click event, simply use the following script:

EmailSubmitButton.execEvent(”click”)

where EmailSubmitButton is the name of your invisible email submit button.

Kevin,

It’s difficult to figure-out what the problem is here. I’m thinking it could be one of two things:

1. You’re trying to do basically what this post’s sample does (browse records from your MSSQL 2000 database on a form) but you’re using Designer 8.0 and Acrobat 8.0. In this case, your problem could be related to attempting to modify the SourceSet model directly instead of using a cloned version.
2. (Shot in the dark…) Your current system environment (i.e. the user under which Acrobat is being executed) doesn’t have permission to access the DSN. For example, if you’re previewing the form in Designer, then Acrobat actually thinks it’s running in a browser which means it may be running under a lowered-permissions user (like IUSR_{username} — the Internet Guest Account) which may not have permission to access the DSN.

I have yet to run into #2 myself so hopefully #1 fixes your problem.

Let me know how it goes.

I have setup a data connection and some formcalc script in a form created in designer 7 which works fine in preview mode, but I get the following error when opening the form using Reader 7.

Error: accessor ‘$sourceSet.DataConnection2.#command.query.commandType’ is unknown.

I have used the following script from Adobe Designer Help:

$sourceSet.DataConnection2.#command.query.commandType = "text"
$sourceSet.DataConnection2.#command.query.select.nodes.item(0).value = Concat("Select*from BRANCH_IN Where branch_number = ", TextField8.rawValue,"")
$sourceSet.DataConnection2.open() 

Have I missed a step? I have checked my Data Connection setup after reading previous posts, and it looks fine.

Thanks,

Katrina

Katrina,

By default, the Adobe Reader is not capable of importing data. Forms that need to do this in Reader need to be Reader-Extended to allow data import. I’m guessing this is why you’re seeing the error in Reader and not when previewing the PDF in Designer.

When viewing the form in Preview Mode, you’re probably using Acrobat Pro which is capable of importing data by default.

Acrobat Pro is capable of Reader-Extending forms to enable certain capabilities on a certain number of forms. You may be able to use it to enable data import in your form when it’s viewed with Reader 7.

Just wanted to drop a quick note of praise.

I know how rare it is to get positive feedback, and this post covered everything I needed to know.

Thanks!

I have been following your tutorials and they work quite well. I have a need for users to open a designer pdf form from the internet, fill it out, transmit the data so that it populates a database, then print the form and mail it in. Could you put together such a tutorial or do you know where one exists? Thanks.

Is Acrobat 6.0 Professional, that is packaged with Adobe CS capable of connecting to an ODBC data source or do I need to upgrade or get LiveCycle? I have not been able to get data to import from a text tab delimited file successfully.

DW,

There are a few different ways you could go about doing this and without a little more detail, it’s difficult to suggest one way over another.

For instance, you could have the PDF form served from your web site and then the data could be submitted to the database via a LiveCycle Forms solution.

The fact that you would like the user to first submit the data, then print and mail-in the form, however, tends to tell me that you need a signature from them. An alternative solution would be to use LiveCycle Barcoded Forms whereby you would encode, in real time, the data entered into the form electronically (prior to printing) into a 2D barcode (usually “PDF 417″). Once the form is filled, the user would print the form, sign it and mail it in to your office. On the receiving end, you would use a 2D barcode scanner to quickly scan the information entered into the form directly into a database and then simply keep the paper copy of the form with the user’s signature for your records.

A 3rd option would be to create a web service to which the form’s data could be submitted over the Internet.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the resources necessary to put together such a sample in a working state. As far as an existing sample, I don’t know if we have one but if we did, it would be on the LiveCycle Developer Center Samples site (you’ll find LC Designer and LC Forms samples there).

Peter,

Acrobat 6.0 Pro should be able to import data from ODBC data sources and you should be able to create ODBC data connections in Designer 6.0 that comes with it.

Chandresh,

Thank you for the complement!

I’m currently looking into this for you and will let you know as soon as I have an answer.

Thanks Stefan - great info! I have used this article to provide my form with access to my data - using ‘previous’, ‘next’ and ‘print’ buttons. The latter prints only the current form - how could I iterate thru my dataset and print ‘all’ records? Thx, Kim.

Tobias,

I think the cause of this problem may lie with the bindings set on the various fields which you’re using to fill the order.

When you drag a field from the Data View palette, it automatically gets an explicit binding to the pertaining data node. If you look in the Binding tab of the Object palette, you’ll find the Default Binding property and it’ll probably contain something like “$record.{DataConnectionName}.DataNodeName”.

If that’s the case, then what will happen on save and re-open is that the data from the database will be pulled into the form after the data is merged-in and it’ll replace all the saved data.

Usually, when you have a dynamic order form such as the one you’re designing, you tend to have drop down lists and list boxes that let the user choose an item from the database which they would like to order. In those cases, you still create a data connection to the database but you use it in a different way than the one I detailed in this article. In particular, you use the “data drop down list” and “data list box” objects found in the Library palette’s Custom tab. These objects contain pre-defined Initialize scripts that will connect to the data connection you specify and populate their lists with the text and value data nodes which you also specify. The difference here is that the drop down lists and list boxes defined in this manner end-up with “Normal” binding types instead of explicit ones to the database. As long as you keep the names of these objects different from the names of the data nodes in your data connection, when you save and re-open the form, they’ll still contain the saved data and yet will still be re-populated with values from the data connection.

You can find an example of using the data drop down list object in the sample form from my article on selecting specific database records. See the “CategoryList” drop down list.

I am to design a database by use of Microsoft access 2003. The data base includes names and with each name the data for specific person is entered. How can I display information of a particular individual by i.e tying on the first letter of a name

Kapuulya,

I think my tutorial on selecting specific database records is exactly what you’re looking for. In fact, the sample form uses a drop down list to allow the user to select a type of movie and then filters the records which the user can browse using the fields below based on that criteria. Any modifications made to the data in a record based on the filter are immediately reflected in the database.

Based on that sample, you could provide a drop down list containing a list of unique letters, those being the first letters of each name in the database. That can all be done with a carefully crafted SQL statement used to populate the drop down list which would essentially serve as your index. A selection in the drop down list would then apply an SQL statement to the second data connection which would simply select all records from the database where the name begins with the letter the user selected.

Svet,

You’re very welcome!

I’ve never personally come across that error.

I found a Microsoft Knowledge Base article which offers suggestions on how to solve the problem which might do the trick for you.

Please let me know if it helps.

M Llewellyn,

Unfortunately, I don’t believe it’s possible to create a DSN on a server and have the form connect to it.

What you can do is share the database file and have everyone create a local DSN to it. This way, people don’t also have to have a local copy of the database. I can’t speak to how secure this is but you can do it quite easily in Windows.

If this still isn’t good enough, then I think you’re only option is to write a web service that runs on the server where the database is located. Your form would then use the web service to set and obtain information and the web service would take care of working directly with the database. This model would actually also be much safer since it wouldn’t directly expose the database.

Mike,

Before we start down the road of Reader Extensions (which is quite expensive if you’re only using it for a small number of forms), what specific error message are you getting when you try to use your form in Reader 8?

Based on what you wrote, it sounds like you are still capable of importing data from a data connection in Reader 8 since your list box is getting pre-filled with database information. Does the user then make a selection, prompting your form to run an SQL query which is supposed to retrieve specific records from the database and display them in bound fields?

Are you getting some sort of security error?

Joanne,

I believe you have two options here:

1. You can use the sample form I provided in this tutorial and modify it such that a new record is added automatically when the form is opened in Acrobat and the only button available is the “update” button (which you could rename “insert”). This way, the user is presented with empty fields ready for new record data which gets inserted into the database when they click on the “insert” (update) button.

   To do this, you would simply remove all buttons except for the “update” button and move the script from the “add new” button into the root subform’s (named “form1″ at the very top of the tree in the Hierarchy palette) Form:Ready event (using the Script Editor palette).

2. A more advanced option would be to use some of the techniques I describe in my tutorial on inserting, updating and deleting records in a database.

Kerry,

I’m happy to hear that you find my blog is a good source of information. It’s always encouraging to hear that it’s useful to people!

Unfortunately, I don’t believe that there’s a way to get a copy of the PDF automatically inserted into a database record via a button on a PDF form you create with Designer. That doesn’t mean it isn’t possible, however, it just means that you’ll have to resort to other technologies, which come into play once the form has been submitted, to help make it work.

For instance, you could design your form such that when the user clicks on the submit button you use today, the last step in the script is to execute an invisible submit button’s Click event, thereby resulting in the submission of the entire PDF, including the filled data, to a destination of your choice. This destination could be a server or even an email address. Once the PDF is received, it could be inserted into the appropriate record in the database, either as a binary blob or linked via OLE (depending on the type of database you use). The idea here would be to do everything in one step: the submission of the data to the database and the submission of the PDF to some destination (i.e. the user still only needs to click once).

This solution is essentially the “Two Button Submit” Technique where the invisible button is a submit button which submits the entire PDF instead of the data only.

You can create this submit button in Designer by using a regular submit button (use a button object from the Library palette and select “Submit” from the “Control Type” property on the Object palette’s Field tab) and specifying “PDF” in the “Submit As” property on the Object palette’s Submit tab (if you’re using Designer 7.1, the property will be named “Submit Format” instead).

To submit the PDF to an email address, simply enter the following Submit

mailto:email@address.com

where “email@address.com” is the email address to which the PDF should be submitted.

Chaitali,

In case you’re using the buttons from the snippet I provided in this tutorial, is it possible that you’ve given a name other than “DataConnection” to your data connection?

If that’s the case, then the scripts on all the buttons would fail (and so you wouldn’t be able to navigate through the records) because their programmed to work with a data connection with a name of “DataConnection”.

Of course, you can change this by editing the scripts on each button using the Script Editor palette available via the top-level Window menu.

I was wondering if there was a way to encrypt the database username/password information on these documents, in case the user saves the document from my website to their local machine. Thanks.

Kristin,

Usually, it’s possible to put the username and password for database access directly in the DSN so that you don’t have to specify it on the data connection itself.

If you can’t do that, then you would obviously want to encrypt that information since the username and password are stored in plain text in your form. What you can do then is go to the “Form Properties” dialog (via the top-level File menu) and switch to the “PDF Security” tab. If you set the permissions to “any except extracting pages” (it’s very important to select this specific option or else your data connection will stop working because any other set of permissions would prevent the data connection from changing field values) and then save your form as PDF, you’ll be asked for a “permissions” password. Once you’ve specified a password, the generated PDF is entirely encrypted (including the form content) yet anyone can open and use the form in Acrobat without having to provide the password. Finally, the next time you open the form in Designer, you’ll be prompted for the permissions password before Designer opens the form which means that if someone downloads your form and attempts to modify it or extract the username/password information, they’ll get blocked at the password prompt.

Siddhartha,

That’s very strange. Based on what you described, you shouldn’t be getting this error.

What the “accessor unknown” error tells me is that the data connection’s name somehow isn’t “DataConnection”. Have you verified that the name of the data connection in the Data View palette is “DataConnection” and not “DataConnection2″ or something of the sort?

You could also try replacing “xfa.sourceSet” with “$sourceSet” (a FormCalc shortcut for “xfa.sourceSet”) in FormCalc to see if that makes a difference although I don’t think it would.

If none of this helps, what version of Acrobat are you using to run the form?

venkatesh,

As long as the other machine has the identical DSN setup (same name, same database, user and password, if any, specified if they were specified in the DSN on the primary machine, etc.), you should be able to use your form on both machines without any problems.

Are you able to test that the DSN is properly configured by clicking on the “test” button in the ODBC configuration applet (in “Administrative Tools” on Windows)?

Are you running the form in Acrobat Professional or Standard on the second machine? You need Acrobat Standard at minimum in order to import data into a form unless you’ve reader-extended it, at which point you can import data into it using the free Adobe Reader.

venkatesh,

That’s a good question. Theoretically, if your images were UTF-8 encoded and stored as text blobs in your database, you might be able to set the value of an image field to the value of the text blob by binding that column to the image field but I’ve never tried to do this in practice. You would also have to set the image field’s content type to specify the type of image contained in its value. For example, if it’s a JPEG, you would set the content type like this in JavaScript:

ImageField1.value.resolveNode("#image").contentType = "image\\jpg";

If you give it a shot, please let me know how you make-out.

Hi,

I have desinged a form in adobe livecycle designer 7.0.

In that i have a button. i want a open a aspx web page as a pop when the button is clicked..

how can i write javascript for this on the button clikc event.. plz help me.

thanks
rajasekhar

Srinath,

Unfortunately, I believe your only alternative, aside from using a web service, is to define the DSN on each system which will use the form.

Martin,

That sounds like an interesting project. Since your form will be online, I’m assuming it’ll be publicly accessible in which case it wouldn’t be a good idea to connect your form directly to a database for security reasons. I would start by creating a web service which would act as the “bridge” between the database on the server and the form on the Internet which you could then connect to your form. This web service could then have methods which let you retrieve the “key data from the database” that you need as well as a method to submit the data to the database (which would also take care of automatically assigning a unique “Person No.” to the new record being submitted).

Once you have that mechanism in place, you would simply add fields to your form for the person’s name, address, etc., and data from the database and provide an execute button which would execute the web service’s database submission method to submit the form’s data to the database.

Hi,

i have a question about the buttons. I did it the same way like it is described above but actually if i want to go to the pdf-view the program gives an error back:
Error: syntax error near token ‘{’ on line 1, column 11.
Script failed (language is formcalc; context is xfa[0].form[0].Formular1[0].#subform[0].Cancel[0])
script=$ourceSet.{Vakken}.next();
Error: syntax error near token ‘{’ on line 1, column 11.
for i think every button. So when i click on the button in the acrobat modus hij says the same like also like by Siddhartha
Jain Script failed(language is formcalc;context is xfa[0].form1[0].myform1[0].dbNext[0])
script=xfa.sourceSet.DataConnection.next()
Error:accessor ‘xfa.sourceSet.DataConnection.next()’ is unknown.
so i changed also the xfa.s to $ but it didn’t help. Perhaps somebody has an idea wat is going wrong here?

thanks,
Bucaneve

thank you very much, now it works!

Hi,

I have an XDP form with 2 pages which i am displaying as HTML uisng ASP.NET application.
before rendering the form i am passing some xml data in to renderform method.
and i have set the formpreference option as “MSDHTML”. when i try to go to next page i get an error
saying “this._peer is null or not an object”. how should i configure this script. i know that the xfasubset.js is not loaded properly. how to do make ths work.
the second part is that i have another xdp form which is of only one page and am rendering as html.
when the formpreference option is set to “MSDHTML” am not able read the inputs in a xml format.
when i set the formpreference to “AUTO” am able to read this data in xml format but the page is not aligned properly.
Can you please help me how to do this working.

Thanks,
NewAdobeUser

Ernest,

It sounds like the problem could be that the DSN isn’t defined on the other machines you’re using the form on. The data connection you defined in your form on your local machine simply tells Acrobat which DSN to look for on the local machine for database connectivity. This unfortunately means that any machine that will use the form needs to have the DSN defined on it.

If you’re looking to deploy this form without requiring users to define the DSN locally, you would have to create a web service to act as the bridge between the form and the database and connect your form to the web service instead since the web service would be available to anyone on your network. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done but it’s really the only way you’ll get around the DSN problem.

NewAdobeUser,

Since I’m not very familiar with Form Server, I asked one of my colleagues who worked on Form Server if he might have an idea of what could be causing these errors. Here’s what he had to say:

The first issue regarding xfasubset.js not getting loaded could be due to an incorrectly set FSWebRoot. This value is set automatically but may need to be customized if the webserver and form server are on different computers.

As for issue #2, MSDHTML and AUTO should be identical when the client browser is IE. I suspect the client browser is not IE and if the user requests MSDHTML for any other browser odd behaviour will occur. When rendering HTML the AUTO form preference should always be used if there is no compelling reason to specify the HTML type explicitly. Using AUTO lets Form Server determine the best flavour of HTML to use and whether client-side scripting can be used.

Hi Stefan,
i had created 2 datadropdown list to read 2 tables from a same DB using the same method as in your answer #4 for mr Dwight, were one table is for ministry , other one for all directories of all ministries.
i want to link between 2 tables in a way that a user will pick a ministry from the datadropdownlist , but in a directory field datadropdownlist it will list only the directories that are belongs to the specified ministry. can you please assist me in this issue.

thanks,

This will be my first LiveCycle application. I have an Access 2007 database that contains contact data (first name, last name, etc.). This data will be editable in a PDF of a scanned paper form with databound fields that I’ve overlaid (that part is already done). I’d like to implement a “Find Contact” dialog that allows for search and selection of a single record from the database, which then gets its details populated into the PDF form. Any suggestions on how to do this?

Mark Richman,

I think my article on selecting specific database records is almost, if not exactly, what you’re looking for. Hopefully you can figure it out from there.

I should amend my above comment - I got the form working on my computer but when I have someone open it with Reader they get the above error - “Error:accessor ‘xfa.sourceSet.contact.update()’ is unknown” and the same with ‘addNew’ -So I guess my new question is can someone with Reader access and submit data through my form that has a database connection to an Access database on the server without having to buy Reader Extension and if so, how do I enable my form to be used by the lowest level of reader possible? Thanks

Well, I myself being fairly new to using LiveCycle I figured I should add that I discovered the following in the documentation:

“The host accessor is valid on any form design object that has events for scripting. You specify the host accessor by using the following syntax:
FormCalc
$host.property_or_method
JavaScript
xfa.host.property_or_method”

So, I assume I stand correct that this was my problem with “Error:accessor ‘xfa.sourceSet.contact.update()’ is unknown”.
Anyone willing to confirm?

Mariam Kadhimi,

With respect to your troubles with the drop down list, what exactly is it that isn’t working when the form is saved as XDP as opposed to PDF? Note that if you’re saving your form as an XDP, then I’m assuming you’re deploying it to a browser in HTML or PDF format using server technology such as Adobe LiveCycle Forms, which also implies that your server must have a DSN defined so that LC Forms can obtain the necessary data from the database and merge it into the form prior to the form being deployed to the client (browser).

As for whether or not a DSN is necessary to connect to a database, it is definitely necessary. If you’re using LC Forms to deploy the form, then the server must have the DSN configured on it; if you want everything to happen on the client side, then every system that loads the form must have the DSN configured on it. The only way I know around this problem is to create a web service which acts as the bridge between the client and the database (which also makes the entire solution much safer since you wouldn’t be giving-out information about the database itself to each client for the “client-only” case) and then connect your form to the web service instead.

Finally, for displaying a sum of particular fields on a page, I would simply place a numeric field at the bottom of each page and use a simple FormCalc expression to set its value using the Calculate event. For example, if page 2 had 3 fields on it, named “NumericField1″, “NumericField2″ and “NumericField3″, and you wanted the “PageTotal” numeric field always to display the sum of their values, you would simply use the following FormCalc expression in the PageTotal’s Calculate event:

NumericField1 + NumericField2 + NumericField3

Andrew,

FormCalc has the advantage of supporting “shortcuts” or “aliases” to certain document properties while JavaScript cannot support them. For example, “$host” in FormCalc is the equivalent of “xfa.host”. You also have “$sourceSet” which equals “xfa.sourceSet”. Another useful one is “$record” which refers to the current data record and is short for “xfa.record”.

When you write scripts in JavaScript instead of FormCalc, you have to use the more verbose accessors (e.g. “xfa.record” instead of “$record”) because the JavaScript scripting engine doesn’t support the “$” character in an identifier name.

In short, when using FormCalc, either syntax should work although I’ve always had more success using JavaScript than FormCalc, especially when it comes to repeating subforms and Instance Managers.

Stefan,

I’m a newb to forms and really don’t have any scripting knowledge at all so please be patient. I’ve been looking at your examples and I can now successfully connect to my DB with the text values showing up nicely in my drop-down. I’ve used both the Custom Data Drop-down List example and the Dynamic Properties example with designer 7.1. What I want to do now is have another field popluated with the hidden value from the drop-down but I just can’t seem to get it to work. If I have another field called for example “Code” in the same subform as my DB populated drop-down what script should i use to get the hidden value into it?

Craig,

I’m glad to see you’re giving Adobe LiveCycle Designer a shot for creating your forms!

You mentioned you have a field named “Code” in the same subform as the drop down list you’re populating from your database. In order to get the drop down list’s hidden value into your “Code” field, you simply need to add a little script to your drop down list’s Change event which will get the hidden value associated with the item the user selected and set it as the “Code” field’s value. The following script should work in both FormCalc and JavaScript (which ever one you’re more comfortable with):

Code.rawValue = this.boundItem(xfa.event.newText);

In the statement above, we’re using the “xfa.event.newText” property to get the text data from the item that was selected. We’re then using that as a parameter into the drop down list’s “boundItem” method which will return the hidden value data associated with the item. Finally, the hidden value is set as the “Code” field’s value.

In addition to the above, I’m also getting the “Connection to the source DataSource failed becuase the environment is not trusted” error when i initially open the form. The form does actually retrieve values from the DB though so this message seems a little strange also.

Cheers

Craig

Hi I just created my first form in Adobe Acrobat 8.0 and I would like to be able to set up a database to extract the data from the fields to. I downloaded the sql driver from the first step and I was able to make it as far as naming the database. I am not sure which fields on the advanced, login, and connect options to fill in to configure the OODBC. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi Stefan,
I am using reference of this site : http://forms.stefcameron.com/2006/09/18/connecting-a-form-to-a-database/
but i am getting this error on all data controls button if i make it as formcalc script and if i change it to javascript data is not inserted in database. I have created system dsn

Script failed(language is formcalc;context is xfa[0].form1[0].PJ-AdminStaff[0].PJF-Faculty[0].dbAddnew[0])
script=//Data connection contol button>> adds new record
Error:accessor ‘xfa.sourceSet.adminform.addnew()’ is unknown

adminform is the name of my DataConnection

The Report pallette shows no error/warning.

If i change the script language to JavaScript, i don’t get any error/popup but the buttons don’t work,i.e the data is not inserted in database, my database is not having any primary key at present.

I followed the steps as outlined in this great blog.
I am using Adobe LifeCycle Designer 7.0 and am connecting to a Table in Access Database.

Can you please guide as to how can i resolve this?

Regards,
Arti

I also followed your suggestions which you gave to Siddartha Jain just for your reference pasting it here below:

May 24th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
That’s very strange. Based on what you described, you shouldn’t be getting this error.
What the “accessor unknown” error tells me is that the data connection’s name somehow isn’t “DataConnection”. Have you verified that the name of the data connection in the Data View palette is “DataConnection” and not “DataConnection2″ or something of the sort?
You could also try replacing “xfa.sourceSet” with “$sourceSet” (a FormCalc shortcut for “xfa.sourceSet”) in FormCalc to see if that makes a difference although I don’t think it would.
If none of this helps, what version of Acrobat are you using to run the form?

hi Stefan ,
iam new to adobe environment , but i have a case i wonder how it can be done using designer 8?

our client (a government authority )have an oracle database want to create pdf forms that its clients can fill offline and bring it back to the authority so they want to post these data again to the database

my question is : can i create a database connection programically (not predefine on the data view )

this is because the following :

we just need to connect the database in two case

1- first time to fill all the drop down list and other lookup data (populate the fields) then save the pdf to save this data

2- on the submit on the our client site after their customer fill it offline and bring it back to client (we want to post this data to the database )

( cause the form will be filled offline and the client not have access to the database)

i hope my questions is clear enough for you