Copy Inner Field

PDF forms often require duplicating fields while maintaining the original formatting and behavior. Using Aspose.PDF for Python, developers can copy an existing field to a new position on the same or another page programmatically.

This article explains how to copy a field named ‘First Name’ to a new field called ‘First Name Copy’ on page 2 at specific coordinates (x=200, y=600), producing a PDF with the newly positioned field.

1. Open an existing PDF form.
2. Create a FormEditor object.
3. Bind the PDF document to the FormEditor.
4. Copy the ‘First Name’ field to a new field ‘First Name Copy’ on page 2 at coordinates (200, 600).
5. Save the updated document.

from io import FileIO
import sys
from os import path
import aspose.pdf as ap
import aspose.pdf.facades as pdf_facades

sys.path.append(path.join(path.dirname(__file__), ".."))

from config import set_license, initialize_data_dir


def copy_inner_field(infile, outfile):
    # Create FormEditor object
    form_editor = pdf_facades.FormEditor()
    # Bind document to FormEditor
    form_editor.bind_pdf(infile)
    # Copies an existing field to a new position specified by both page number and ordinates.
    # A new document will be produced, which contains everything the source document has except for the newly copied field.
    form_editor.copy_inner_field("First Name", "First Name Copy", 2, 200, 600)
    # Save updated document
    form_editor.save(outfile)

Please note:

The ‘copy_inner_field’ method signature looks like this:

copy_inner_field(original_field_name, new_field_name, page_number, x, y)

• ‘original_field_name’ – the field you want to duplicate.
• ’new_field_name’ – the name of the new field.
• ‘page_number’ – the page on which the new field will appear.
• x, y – coordinates on that page.

The page_number is expected to be a positive integer corresponding to an existing page in the PDF (1-based indexing).

If you pass a negative parameter, e.g.:

form_editor.copy_inner_field("First Name", "First Name Copy", -1, 200, 600)

The program will then reset to the previous parameters.