form data extraction

[88arvin]

how to extract data (field name + field values) from filled form and save it into csv file?

[jsvine]

Hi @88arvin; have you tried the method described in the "Extracting form values" section of the README.md? If so, can you describe what didn't work, and provide the PDF it didn't work for?

[jsvine]

Thanks, @88arvin and @cmdlineluser. I'm not very familiar with XFA forms. I'd be theoretically open to adding support for them, but it might take me a while to familiarize myself with this corner of the PDF world. If there's someone out there that knows the XFA spec well, I'd love to hear from you.

In the meantime, you might have some luck with this particular PDF exploring the object here:

pdf = pdfplumber.open("Form.pdf")
print(pdf.doc.catalog["AcroForm"].resolve()["XFA"])

[88arvin]

Why I am getting this error - AttributeError: 'dict' object has no attribute 'resolve'
@cmdlineluser - Are you able to access Form_new.pdf ?
Form_new.pdf

[cmdlineluser]

Yes, I can access that PDF.

I'm not sure why you're getting that error, I get KeyError: 'AcroForm'

pdf = pdfplumber.open('Downloads/Form_new.pdf')

fields = pdf.doc.catalog["AcroForm"].resolve()["Fields"]

form_data = {}

for field in fields:
    field_name = field.resolve()["T"]
    field_value = field.resolve()["V"]
    form_data[field_name] = field_value

[88arvin]

@cmdlineluser and @jsvine
Take a look at this - https://github.com/AF-VCD/pdf-xfa-tools

[cmdlineluser]

Yes, it uses pikepdf which uses qpdf to do the parsing.

https://github.com/pikepdf/pikepdf

https://github.com/qpdf/qpdf

As for pdfminer, pdfminer/pdfminer.six#497 suggests it should be possible and refers to: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18587878/extract-xdp-or-xfa-from-pdf/33293026#33293026

But nothing seems to have come from it as of yet.