iText in Action

Chapter 15. Creating annotations and fields

This chapter covers

• Annotations: overview of the most common types

• Fields: buttons, text fields, choice fields

• Forms: a second series of actions

In chapter 2, you learned how to fill in form fields using PdfStamper. We didn’t go into the details of form filling, nor did we discuss how a PDF containing an interactive form (an AcroForm) can be created using iText objects. Most fields in such a form use widget annotations to represent their appearance and to manage user interactions.

That’s why we’ll begin this chapter by explaining how to add annotations to a PDF document. In the second part of this chapter, you’ll use widget annotations to create three types of form fields: button, text, and choice fields. ...