We have developed online software that allows an administrator in the software to upload files. Many of these files are PDF's. Numerous customers would like the ability to upload fill-able PDF's (PDF forms) and have their users save the PDF form right to the server as opposed to having to download the file, fill it out, and re-upload it. Our software is built using mainly PHP and MySQL, although the basic web languages such as HTML and CSS come into play. We also use Javascript and jQuery to make many features work.
I've done hours and hours of searching and haven't found an exact answer to this question: We would like to be able to have fill-able PDF's that either save directly to the web server or have the ability to grab the data from the PDF form that the user filled out and save it to a database. With the latter approach, I assume we could use PHP's fdf and input the data stored in the database into a blank PDF and show it to the user if requested later.
A preferred approach would be to use PHP and save the PDF form directly to the server, but I haven't found any open source options or suggestions on how to write my own method.
Edit: I've attempted to use Adobe Acrobat Pro's functionality to submit a form. When submitting a form I haven't been able to get any information via PHP's $_POST, $_FILES, or $_REQUEST (From what I've read Acrobat POSTS the data). I attemped to follow the directions here: Can a PDF fillable form post itself to an HTTPS URL? but to no avail.
Edit: The software also needs to have the ability to use PDF's, not create HTML <form>s. The reason behind is the software is for high schools and administrators at high schools don't want to have use an online editor to create a form when they already have a PDF created. An alternative could be to have the administrator upload a PDF and create a form from that. The question would then remain - how to push the data saved from an HTML form to a copy of the PDF later on? By using PHP's fdf functionality?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.