PSPDFKit 6.5 Migration Guide

PSPDFKit 6.5 for iOS is our latest framework update.

Forms

In this version, we completely reengineered how form fields are represented in PSPDFKit. The biggest difference is that form elements are split into two distinct classes now: PSPDFFormField and PSPDFFormElement.

Previously, PSPDFFormElement represented both non-UI form field data and the widget annotation. This occasionally caused problems and required us to keep a hierarchy of annotations. With this change, a PSPDFFormElement is strictly only an annotation that will be displayed on the screen, while PSPDFFormField takes over all the backend work of modifying form field states.

Changes

In addition to being able to get all PSPDFFormElements from PSPDFFormParser, we introduced a property called formFields for retrieving all form fields.

The parent or kids properties are no longer available because a PSPDFFormElement no longer forms a hierarchy. You can retrieve the linked PSPDFFormField using the formField property.

The PSPDFFormField has an annotations property that lists all annotations connected to this specific form field. For example, a PSPDFButtonFormField can have multiple PSPDFButtonFormElements listed in its annotations property, all of which form one radio button group.

Properties that only dealt with form field data, like mappingName and alternativeFieldName, have been moved to PSPDFFormField.

The PSPDFWidgetAnnotation property shouldRenderApperanceStream has been removed due to internal changes that require us to render the appearance stream.

After setting the contents or value of a PSPDFFormElement, it’s no longer necessary to send a PSPDFAnnotationChangedNotification notification. This will be handled by the framework internally, and the UI will update accordingly.

XFDF Changes

Previously, it was possible to import PSPDFFormElement annotations using XFDF. According to the XFDF spec, this is actually not supported and has been removed.

Swift 2.3

With PSPDFKit 6.5 for iOS, we changed the superclass of PSPDFConfigurationBuilder to PSPDFBaseConfigurationBuilder. When using Swift 2.3, this type isn’t correctly inferred, which leads to a compiler error, and which seems to be a bug in Swift 2.3. To fix this, you need to cast the closure parameter to PSPDFConfigurationBuilder:

let configuration = PSPDFConfiguration { (builder: PSPDFConfigurationBuilder) in

This works correctly on Swift 3 and doesn’t need any casting.