get_fields {staplr}

Get form fields from a pdf form

Description

If the toolkit Pdftk is available in the system, it will be called to get form fields from a pdf file.

See the reference for detailed usage of pdftk.

Usage

get_fields(
  input_filepath = NULL,
  convert_field_names = FALSE,
  encoding_warning = TRUE
)

Arguments

input_filepath

the path of the input PDF file. The default is set to NULL. IF NULL, it prompt the user to select the folder interactively.

convert_field_names

By default pdftk will encode certain characters of the field names in plain text UTF-8 so if using a non-latin alphabet, your field names might be illegible. Setting this to TRUE will turn the UFT-8 code into characters. However this process it not guaranteed to be perfect as pdftk does not differentiate between encoded text and regular text using escape characters. If you have field names that intentionally include components that look like encoded characters this will attempt to fix them. Use this option only when necessary. If TRUE, remember to set it to TRUE when using set_fields as well.

encoding_warning

If field names include strings that look like plain text UTF-8 codes, the function will return a warning by default, suggesting setting convert_field_names to codeTRUE. If encoding_warning is FALSE, these warnings will be silenced.

Value

A list of fields. With type, name and value components. To use with set_fields edit the value element of the fields you want to modify. If the field of type "button", the value will be a factor. In this case the factor levels describe the possible values for the field. For example for a checkbox the typical level names would be "Off" and "Yes", corresponding to non checked and checked states respectively.

Author(s)

Ogan Mancarci

References

https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/

See Also

link{set_fields}

Examples

pdfFile = system.file('simpleForm.pdf',package = 'staplr')
fields = get_fields(pdfFile)