Monitor and debug HTTP calls from Adobe Reader

[Tarek Faham]

I installed Fiddler Web Debugger, and I am trying to configure it to monitor the HTTP calls from Adobe Reader/Acrobat DC. I have Dynamic PDF forms that will invoke URLs using JavaScript under Acrobat. I appreciate your guiding me to configure Fiddler to debug such HTTP calls. Mind you that I managed to debug the calls from IE, and now I want to debug the same from Adobe Acrobat DC.

 

Tarek

[Nick Iliev]

Hi Tarek,

 

Thank you for your interest in Fiddler!

Fiddler is a web proxy that captures requests going through HTTP and HTTPS. How is Acrobat DC making the network requests - is it using TCP or some other protocol? I could not find any technical information from the Adobe site, so please, if you have more details, share them with us so that we could investigate the case. In any way, Fiddler will capture all ingoing/outgoing traffic that goes through the system proxy if it is HTTP or HTTPS.

 

Regards,
Nick Iliev
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[Tarek Faham]

Thank you, Nick!

I am referring to the programmatic capabilities for invoking URLs from Acrobat. For example, you can use FormCalc URL Functions and Net.HTTP object to do the same. Open the PDF form the links below and search for the relevant keywords:

https://helpx.adobe.com/pdf/aem-forms/6-2/formcalc-reference.pdf (URL Functions)

https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/js_api_reference.pdf (Net.HTTP and a couple of other methods)

You can use Adobe LC Designer Free trial to write a test call using FormCalc and Acrobat JavaScript:

 

https://thelivecycle.blogspot.com/2016/05/aem-forms-designer-trial.html

You can test JavaScript directly if you have Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. Open any PDF and Press Ctrl-J (must first enable JavaScript from Ctrl-K). You can use the console to test JS directly. Just write the code, highlight, and press "Ctrl-Enter".

You can only test FormCalc using Designer (I think).

I just need to know if there is anything special I need to do to capture/debug the URLs invocations from Acrobat.

In one instance, I am getting errors, and I don't know what is the root-cause. That's why I need to debug such invocations.

Regards,

Tarek

[Tarek Faham]

I have posted a reply, and got a message that it needs review. Can I ask the admin if the review is in process?

[Nick Iliev]

Hi Tarek,

While I am not familiar with FormCalc (which, as far as I understand, is a calculation language from Adobe), it looks like the programmatic commands are executed from within Adobe DC, probably from a build-in console. We still don't know what library is used within Acrobat DC to manage those requests. However, one possibility is that the requests made from JavaScript/FormCalc are going through a process like node.js. If that is the case, it would depend on the specific Node library used for the HTTP requests, but some of them rely on the Node proxy settings. These are set through the environment variables HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY. You could try this solution to check if the Acrobat DC reader respects and uses the environment variables used by Node.js and other terminal applications.

 

Regards,
Nick Iliev
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