I once spent a little time with CAM::PDF (after reading the same sources you did). I intended to use it for form field replacement (as you are). My experience was that the documentation and examples didn't quite match the layout that was coming from my PDF form source. At the time I was using open source PDF editors to create the forms and there were problems just generating a valid form to start with (form fields were just too advanced and buggy for the edit tool). In the end, I gave up on using forms, and simply created my PDFs from scratch with PDF::ReportWriter, eventually contributing more formatting features which can be found on Daniel's website http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis/PDF-ReportWriter/.

My failure make CAM::PDF work was due to invalid PDF form sources. With valid form sources, I'm sure it will work fine, but maybe not exactly the way the examples show it. This probably doesn't help you much, but I hated to see the question go unanswered.

Just came across this while searching for same--I'm using the Federal W4 form, and it's set up similarly.

First of all, trying to modify the object returned by getFormFieldDict() isn't going to get you anywhere. It says right in the docs that it's supposed to be treated as a read-only construct; it's not really a pointer to the dictionary object.

Second, after much futzing around, I figured out that something like this works (snipping from your code above):

foreach my $field ( @FIELDS ) {
    if ($field =~ /^c/) {
        my $ff_obj    = $pdf->getFormField($field);

        $ff_obj->{value}->{value}->{AS}->{value} = checkThisBox() ? 'Y
+es' : 'Off';
    }
    else {
        $pdf->fillFormFields($field => $field);
    }
}
[download]

I found that when a checkbox is checked manually, there are three properties that different from one that's not checked:

1. $ff_obj->{value}->{value}->{AS}
2. $ff_obj->{value}->{value}->{DV}
3. $ff_obj->{value}->{value}->{V} (the one you found)

However, changing the value of the 'value' key on 'DV' and 'V' didn't seem to do anything for me. That is, these statements didn't seem to do anything:

• $ff_obj->{value}->{value}->{DV}->{value} = checkThisBox() ? 'Yes' : 'Off';
• $ff_obj->{value}->{value}->{V}->{value} = checkThisBox() ? 'Yes' : 'Off';

Reason being . . . 'DV' and 'V' stand for 'Default Value' and 'Value', respectively. In the inner workings of a PDF form, these values are useful for processing and whatnot, but unlike in the DOM or something like that, the *value* of the checkbox and whether an actual checkmark appears in that box are not necessarily the same (if you're setting them programmatically).

Hence, the 'AS' key, which stands for 'Appearance State'. Setting the value AS's 'value' key thus places a checkmark there.

So, depending on what you're doing with this form, you may also want to set 'DV' and/or 'V' the same way, like if you're actually presenting it as a web form complete with some Javascript or other logic. In my case, I'm just filling the forms in with data from a database and sending them straight to the printer, so I don't care about the actual checkbox values.

Hope this helps.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
        use strict;
        use CAM::PDF;
       my $pdf = CAM::PDF->new('tenant.pdf') or die "Could not open PD
+F ($!)!";
my @fields = $pdf->getFormFieldList();
foreach my $field ( @fields ) {
    if ($field =~ /Female/) {
        my $ff_obj    = $pdf->getFormField($field);

        $ff_obj->{value}->{value}->{AS}->{value} = "On";
    }
    else {
        $pdf->fillFormFields($field => $field);
    }
}
$pdf->cleanoutput('afilled.pdf');
[download]

Upon further research on the checkbox issue, I just realized that {AS}->{value} is where you can control the option

In the same PDF file that I worked in above instance, there is another kind of check box in the dictionary that is using indirectObject

which points to a parent dictionary which has {AS}->{value}. In this instance {AS}->{value} was set "Off" initially but I had to use {D}->{value} which is inside of the same parent dictionary to set {AS}->{value} to turn check box on,in my case, it is "Yes_2", that is {AS}-{value}="Yes_2"

I have used following improved code to mark my checkbox in pdf

#!/usr/bin/perl -w  use strict; use CAM::PDF;  my $pdf = CAM::PDF->new('tenant.pdf') or die "Could not open PDF ($!)!";  $pdf->getFormFieldList();  my $field ="Female";  my $ff_obj    = $pdf->getFormField($field);        $ff_obj->{value}->{value}->{AS}->{value} = "On";   $pdf->cleanoutput('afilled.pdf');