TechNote

Form images cannot be retrieved from a remote location at run time (Acrobat, LiveCycle Designer ES)

Issue

In Adobe Acrobatand Adobe Reader 8.1 or later, you can no longer use a script to retrieve images from the remote location at run time. You can use only the image that is included in the form at design time.

Reason

Although retrieving images from a remote location (either a URL or a local hard drive) at run time was allowed in Acrobat 8.0 or earlier, this functionality was changed in Acrobat 8.1 to improve security.

Solution

An alternate approach when you need to retrieve a form image from a remote location is to use either a web service or a database connection. At run time, the web service (or the database connection) retrieves a string that contains Base64-encoded image contents that can be then bound to a form, therefore displaying the image.

Retrieving images from a hard drive at run time is allowed only in the certified forms.