How to get the position of a field using pdfbox?

Question

I got stuck in one area. I need to identify the positions of the PDAcroForm fields in one pdf. I need to do some processing with the x and y value of the fields.

Any idea how to do this? Is the information present in the COS object?

Answer 1

I had the same problem today. The following code works in my case:

private PDRectangle getFieldArea(PDField field) {
  COSDictionary fieldDict = field.getDictionary();
  COSArray fieldAreaArray = (COSArray) fieldDict.getDictionaryObject(COSName.RECT);

  float left = (float) ((COSFloat) fieldAreaArray.get(0)).doubleValue();
  float bottom = (float) ((COSFloat) fieldAreaArray.get(1)).doubleValue();
  float right = (float) ((COSFloat) fieldAreaArray.get(2)).doubleValue();
  float top = (float) ((COSFloat) fieldAreaArray.get(3)).doubleValue();

  return new PDRectangle(new BoundingBox(left, bottom, right, top));
}

Edit: karthicks code is shorter. So I use this code now:

private PDRectangle getFieldArea(PDField field) {
  COSDictionary fieldDict = field.getDictionary();
  COSArray fieldAreaArray = (COSArray) fieldDict.getDictionaryObject(COSName.RECT);
  PDRectangle result = new PDRectangle(fieldAreaArray);
  return result;
}

And you can use this code if you want to test that the returned rectangle is correct:

private void printRect(final PDPageContentStream contentStream, final PDRectangle rect) throws IOException {
  contentStream.setStrokingColor(Color.YELLOW);
  contentStream.drawLine(rect.getLowerLeftX(), rect.getLowerLeftY(), rect.getLowerLeftX(), rect.getUpperRightY()); // left
  contentStream.drawLine(rect.getLowerLeftX(), rect.getUpperRightY(), rect.getUpperRightX(), rect.getUpperRightY()); // top
  contentStream.drawLine(rect.getUpperRightX(), rect.getLowerLeftY(), rect.getUpperRightX(), rect.getUpperRightY()); // right
  contentStream.drawLine(rect.getLowerLeftX(), rect.getLowerLeftY(), rect.getUpperRightX(), rect.getLowerLeftY()); // bottom
  contentStream.setStrokingColor(Color.BLACK);
}