Perl Requires Chilkat v11.7.0+

What PDF Text Replacement Does Not Change: Metadata, Links, Form Fields

See more PDF Text Replacement Examples

TextReplace changes the page content only. A placeholder that also appears in the document's metadata (the Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator or Producer), in a link's target URL, or in a form field's value is left as it is and reported in "notReplaced" with "where" saying which. The invoice template's title is "Invoice for {{customer}}" and its "View this invoice online" link points at a URL that holds {{customer}}. Perl

use chilkat();

$success = 0;

#  This example requires the Chilkat API to have been previously unlocked.
#  See Global Unlock Sample for sample code.

#  The PDF used in this example is available at invoice_template.pdf

$pdf = chilkat::CkPdf->new();
$success = $pdf->LoadFile("qa_data/pdf/invoice_template.pdf");
if ($success == 0) {
    print $pdf->lastErrorText() . "\r\n";
    exit;
}

$json = chilkat::CkJsonObject->new();
$json->UpdateString("placeholders.customer","Acme Corp");
#  (The other placeholders are left as they are for this example.)
$json->UpdateString("unusedPlaceholders","keep");

$jsonOut = chilkat::CkJsonObject->new();
$success = $pdf->TextReplace("apply",$json,$jsonOut);
if ($success == 0) {
    print $pdf->lastErrorText() . "\r\n";
    exit;
}

print "In the page content, customer was replaced " . $jsonOut->IntOf("replacements[0].count") . " times." . "\r\n";

#  Where else the placeholder occurs, untouched:
$i = 0;
$count_i = $jsonOut->SizeOfArray("notReplaced");
while ($i < $count_i) {
    $jsonOut->put_I($i);
    print "not replaced: {{" . $jsonOut->stringOf("notReplaced[i].field") . "}} in " . $jsonOut->stringOf("notReplaced[i].where") . "\r\n";
    $i = $i + 1;
}

$success = $pdf->WriteFile("qa_output/invoice_customer.pdf");
if ($success == 0) {
    print $pdf->lastErrorText() . "\r\n";
    exit;
}

#  Sample output:

#  In the page content, customer was replaced 2 times.
#  not replaced: {{customer}} in metadata
#  not replaced: {{customer}} in linkTarget