How to code Adobe JavaScript, how to code PDF JavaScript – Adobe Acrobat – Fill, edit, sign, and share PDFs on any device.

Instead of console. This also works with variables:. In addition to the console. For any other resource, you have to take the examples presented, and covert them to what Acrobat expects you to use. In these books and probably most other JavaScript books , the JavaScript examples are wrapped in HTML, and you have to identify where the script is, extract it and then potentially modify it to make it run within Acrobat.

Here is an example of what you might find:. Thom Parker already did an excellent job explaining this Acrobat feature, so there is no need to do this again. When we try to run the above line of code, Acrobat will report an error on the JavaScript console:.

This is one of these differences between the application specific extensions that sneaks into the description of the core language: Every web browser will display an alert message box when this line of JavaScript gets executed, but Acrobat does not know about the alert function.

Acrobat does however provide very similar functionality via the app. See the description in the SDK documentation for more information. We can use the simplest form of app. The first line again is the code I am executing, the second line shows the return value of what got executed. This takes care of informing the user about what our program did.

Often there is also a requirement to ask the user for input. In a web browser, the JavaScript program would use the prompt function, which again does not exist in Acrobat this is example2. We already know what to do with the second line, to replace the prompt function call with something that Acrobat understands, we will use the app. Once you have a good understanding of the core language, you need to become familiar with how JavaScript is used in Acrobat.

If you need any help in learning JavaScript, or in how it is used with and in Adobe Acrobat, keep in mind that I do run a consulting business and part of what I do is to provide training. Full disclosure: Some of the links to books on this page use my Amazon affiliate link, so when you order through one of these links, I will get a few cents.

Thanks for this post! It will help me a lot for my little scripting project. I keep in mind that you offer consulting services. Thanks for the great introduction to Javascript for Acrobat DC. Unfortunately, many of these tasks involve alot of manual work with Acrobat. I was hoping that I would be able to automate the process using the GUI, but this is not possible.

Having a dedicated introduction to this variant of JS is extremely helpful as it prevents alot of wasted time learning about the unecessary part of JS. Many thanks once again. Your email address will not be published. If the information you found on my site helped you to solve a problem, please consider to hire me for your next PDF related project. There are some big advantages to running a script in an Action, as well as a number of serious limitations.

It’s important to understand both sides in order to write efficient, error-free scripts. In addition, as we’ll see, to get the most out of an Action Script, a little creativity is needed to work around some of the limitations. Most of the scripting used in an Action is very straightforward, and is written in exactly the same way as the code placed in a folder-level trusted function.

For example, here is a single line of code that places the file name along the bottom edge of all pages in the PDF using the watermark function. The script is simple, but it makes a custom change to the PDF that could not be done with any of the other Action Commands.

If the document has an existing watermark, the new footer text is added to that watermark, so the code does not destroy anything already on the PDF. Notice that event. In this code, the ” this ” keyword could also have been used, but using the official, and explicit reference to the document object is a much better practice. Saving to a custom file name: The Actions Dialog provides several options for saving the files operated on, including options for renaming the files with prefixes and postfixes.

However, these additions to the file name are static. A script is the only way to provide a flexible, custom-file-name option. For example, here is a short script that appends the current date to the file name and saves it into a subfolder of the original file.

It seems like there is a lot to this script, but it is really just a simple set of text manipulations to build the destination file name and path. Building a report file This technique is very useful for analyzing documents. The code in that example is very complex. A simplified version will be presented here.

For this example, a script will be created that reports the number of pages for each document run through the Action. It was stated earlier that there is no way for the script to know whether a document is the first or last in the process, so a method is needed that does not depend on detecting the beginning or end of the Action process.

To deal with this issue, the script will use the report document itself. If no report document is open, then one will be opened. If it is open, then the script will add information to it.

In this example, it is assumed there is a generic report document, available in a known location. It is also assumed that the report document contains a list field where the collected data will be placed. Here’s the script:. The document object for the report doc is stored in the global object. The first line detects the existence of the doc object by testing a property of that object. If the document was never opened, or if the user closed the report doc from a previous run, then the JavaScript engine will throw an exception and the catch block will open and initialize the report document.

This is just one method. The report doc could have been detected in a different way. For example, the open report doc is also listed in the app.

The location of the report document is completely arbitrary; it could be placed anywhere that is convenient. In the Create Comment Summary Action, the report document is created at runtime using the app. It also could have been done using the Report object.

The important bit is to have an open PDF document to act as a repository for the collected data. It’s also a good idea to include fields on the report doc for displaying the time and date of the Action run, and maybe even the user name. Once the report document is open, data will be added to it every time the Action is run. To create a clean report document, this file should be saved to a new location and closed. The save action can be added to the startup code in the catch block, for example saving to the folder of the first document.

This is the best place to put an automatic save. There is no easy way to know when the last document is processed, so the save, if it is added to the code, has to happen when the document is first opened. Getting user input at the beginning of the process For some actions it is necessary to ask the user for input parameters in order to run the Action.

If the same parameters will be used for all documents processed, then this should happen only once, at the beginning of the process. The challenge, of course, is detecting the beginning of the process. The answer to this challenge is provided by the previous example that uses a report document.

The report document can be used as a kind of marker to determine the state of the process. If the report document is not open, then the Action has just started and the script displays a popup or custom dialog for collecting data. If the report document is already open, then the script proceeds with the business logic of the Action. This technique works nicely, but it is a bit awkward because the report is still open when the Action is complete. If the user wants to run the Action with new parameters, they must close the report document.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any other less-awkward solutions. Here’s a short demo script that shortens the number of pages in a PDF to the number of pages specified by the user. The business logic for this script is only two lines of code, i.

Everything else is preparation. The script starts off by testing for both the existence of the report doc and the global. If either does not exist, then the report document is opened and the user is asked to enter the page length used to truncate the PDFs.

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This guide is governed by the Adobe Acrobat SDK License Agreement and The JavaScript variable is created and is assigned a value of To learn how to create JavaScript scripts, download the JavaScript manuals from the Adobe website. Developing Acrobat®Applications Using.