Copy Outer Field

Sometimes, PDF forms require reusing fields from one document in another. Using Aspose.PDF for Python, developers can programmatically copy form fields from a source PDF to a target PDF.

The FormEditor class provides the ‘copy_outer_field’ method, which copies a field from a source document to a target document at a specified page and coordinates.

The code creates a new PDF (target), adds a page, and then copies a field from an existing PDF (source) to the target document at specified coordinates.

1. Create a new target PDF document.
2. Add at least one page to the target PDF.
3. Save the empty target document.
4. Create a FormEditor object and bind it to the target PDF.
5. Copy the ‘First Name’ field from the source PDF to page 1 at (200, 600).
6. Save the updated target PDF.

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_outer_field(infile, outfile):
    # Since copy_outer_field() method needs to copy field from source document to target document, we need to create a new document as target document first.
    doc = ap.Document()
    doc.pages.add()
    doc.save(outfile)

    # Create FormEditor object
    form_editor = pdf_facades.FormEditor()
    # Bind document to FormEditor
    form_editor.bind_pdf(outfile)
    # 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_outer_field(infile, "First Name", 1, 200, 600)
    # Save updated document
    form_editor.save(outfile)

Please note:

The ‘copy_outer_field’ method signature looks like this:

copy_outer_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_outer_field("First Name", "First Name Copy", 1, -200, 600)

The program will then reset to the previous parameters.