PDFBox: How to “flatten” a PDF-form?

Question

How do I \"flatten\" a PDF-form (remove the form-field but keep the text of the field) with PDFBox?

Same question was answered here:

a quick

Answer 1

I don't have enough points to comment but SJohnson's response of setting the field to read only worked perfectly for me. I am using something like this with PDFBox:

private void setFieldValueAndFlatten(PDAcroForm form, String fieldName, String fieldValue) throws IOException {
    PDField field = form.getField(fieldName);
    if(field != null){
        field.setValue(fieldValue);
        field.setReadonly(true);
    }
}

This will write your field value and then when you open the PDF after saving it will have your value and not be editable.