[PDFBOX-3638] NullPointerException when setting form field value

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 2.0.3, 2.0.4
• Fix Version/s: 2.0.5, 3.0.0 PDFBox
• Component/s: AcroForm
• Assignee: Tilman Hausherr
• Reporter: Tilman Ginzel
• Created: 20/Dec/16 12:45
• Updated: 25/Mar/17 18:12
• Resolved: 20/Dec/16 21:01

Description

Hi,

I am not able to fill out form fields using 2.0.3 or 2.0.4.
When calling field.setValue("value") I get a NullPointerException.

Code:

PDDocument doc = PDDocument.load(new File("input.pdf"));
PDAcroForm form = doc.getDocumentCatalog().getAcroForm();
form.getField("firstname").setValue("name");
form.flatten();
doc.save("output.pdf");

Stacktrace:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
	at org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPageContentStream.getName(PDPageContentStream.java:964)
	at org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPageContentStream.setNonStrokingColor(PDPageContentStream.java:1172)
	at org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.interactive.form.AppearanceGeneratorHelper.initializeAppearanceContent(AppearanceGeneratorHelper.java:211)
	at org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.interactive.form.AppearanceGeneratorHelper.setAppearanceValue(AppearanceGeneratorHelper.java:167)
	at org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.interactive.form.PDTextField.constructAppearances(PDTextField.java:263)
	at org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.interactive.form.PDTerminalField.applyChange(PDTerminalField.java:228)
	at org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.interactive.form.PDTextField.setValue(PDTextField.java:218)

The private property PDResources resources is null.

If I set form.setNeedAppearances(true); before setting the value, the NullPointerException is gone. But then form.flatten() does break something, all form fields are empty in the resulting pdf.

Maybe this is an issue with our pdf. The same code works using version 2.0.2, but there I suffer from the black border issue (see 3454)

I attached the pdf and a screenshot with some infos from the PDFDebugger tool as requested.

Thanks in advance.

Issue Links

• duplicates: PDFBOX-3701 NullPointerException at PDPageContentStream.getName when setting Text Value