Client Side PDF Forms

PDFs have become the digital equivalent of what was once printed on paper and will likely remain in use for a long time. They offer an easy way to present structured information, and FileMaker simplifies PDF generation by allowing you to save your layout's design as a PDF.

However, there are times when simply exporting FileMaker data to a PDF isn't enough — you may need to populate an existing PDF with data. The challenge can be getting your FileMaker data into a copy of the PDF. While there are external tools and plugins that help with this, there have been few native client-side solutions until recent years. To make this possible, we can leverage FileMaker's Web Viewer and its integration with a JavaScript library.

In this video, I'll show you how to populate a form-fillable PDF with data from your FileMaker solution using a Web Viewer, a JavaScript library, custom code, and any existing PDF form. Once you understand the basics of how a PDF reports its fields and types, inserting data into a PDF becomes straightforward. Mastering this integration will give you the ability to work with your own PDFs, and in some cases, you may find that creating a fillable PDF template is more efficient than exporting a PDF directly from a FileMaker layout.

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