Take a look at  http://pdfbox.apache.org/dependencies.html. This lists the optional and mandatory jar files.

3. Programming with PDFBox:

As my knowledge of PDFBox is limited you may not get the answers that you are looking but I hope to keep updating this page as I learn.

Now that you have installed PDFBox you might wonder what to do next. Try running the sample code you have downloaded (refer to  FAQ 1 above). Next, try to get a basic understanding of the PDF specification. All PDF files are supposed to follow certain rules or format and understanding the specification helps you program/design code better. As you go through the PDF specification you will understand PDFBox better (as to why certain classes/processes exist). I am attempting to summarize the PDF specification at this link, but my effort is far from over and still in progress. Have a look at it though and refer to further reliable resources mentioned on that page.

Finally write lots of code.

Creating a new PDF file (just a blank page):

This section refers to this sample code.

If you have been through the FAQs and looked at the sample code you would have a basic idea on how PDFBox works. PDFBox considers the class PDDocument found in the package org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel to be equivalent of a PDF file. If you are opening or creating a PDF file you will be working with this class. Open the JavaDoc (refer to FAQ 3) and have a good look at the methods found in this class.

A PDF file generally consists of one or more pages. It would be safe to assume that all PDF files will have at least one page. So if you are creating a PDF file using the you would need at least one page. The class that helps you represent a page is PDPage (again found under the same pdmodel package).

Here are the steps to create a Blank PDF file.

Look at the sample code. The code is very simple to understand and after looking at the code attempt to create your first blank PDF!!

Here is my code based on the sample code to create a Blank PDF file - bad programming style but gave me great satisfaction upon execution.

/**
 * @(#)BlankPDF.java
 *
 *
 * @author Stephen H
 * @version 1.00 2011/6/20
 */
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.*;
import java.io.*;

public class BlankPDF {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        PDDocument doc = null;
        try{
            doc = new PDDocument();
        } catch (IOException ie){
            System.out.println(ie);
        }
        doc.addPage(new PDPage());
        try{
            doc.save("Empty PDF.pdf");
            doc.close();
        } catch (Exception io){
            System.out.println(io);
        }
    }
}

Creating a new PDF file (with text):

This section refers to this sample code.

If you read the previous section you will have a fair idea on how to create a PDF file with a blank page. In this section we will discuss how to create a PDF file with some text in it! However, I must admit that some of the classes are pretty new to me and apart from the reasons as to how we use them, I do not know much about them. Hopefully, I will be able to understand these classes better in the future. As I stressed earlier they will make a lot more sense to me once I learn more from the PDF specification. Anyway, the process is very similar.

Note: Even though the steps involving setFont() and moveTextPositionByAmount() might seem to be optional, they are not. If you skip any or both of these steps you will be left with a PDF file that cannot be opened by the PDF reader. The error message that I had with Adobe Reader was "There was an error opening this document. The file is damaged and could not be repaired."

Refer to the sample code. Here is my code based on the sample code. My apologies for the bad programming style.

/**
 * @(#)PDFWithText.java
 *
 *
 * @author Stephen H
 * @version 1.00 2011/6/21
 */

import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPage;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.edit.PDPageContentStream;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.font.PDType1Font;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.font.PDFont;

public class PDFWithText {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        PDDocument doc = null;
        PDPage page = null;

       try{
           doc = new PDDocument();
           page = new PDPage();

           doc.addPage(page);
           PDFont font = PDType1Font.HELVETICA_BOLD;

           PDPageContentStream content = new PDPageContentStream(doc, page);
           content.beginText();
           content.setFont( font, 12 );
           content.moveTextPositionByAmount( 100, 700 );
           content.drawString("Hello from www.printmyfolders.com");

           content.endText();
           content.close();
          doc.save("PDFWithText.pdf");
          doc.close();
    } catch (Exception e){
        System.out.println(e);
    }
}
}

Working with an existing PDF file:

If you are looking at working with existing PDF files, the class that will mean a lot to you will be the PDDocument class again (found in the package org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel).

The most important method is the static overloaded method load. The purpose of this method is to assign a PDF file to the PDDocument class. You will first load the PDF file using this method and then manipulate the PDF using other methods of PDDocument. Out of the many overloaded load methods, here are some.

Refer to the JavaDoc for details of these and other overloaded methods.

You can now use these methods to get more information about the PDF file.

 

Here is the code to convert a image file to a PDF file.

 

/**
* PDFBoxTest.java
*
*
* @author Stephen H
* @version 1.00 2012/6/2
*/

import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.*;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.edit.*;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.graphics.xobject.*;
import java.io.*;

 

public class PDFBoxTest{
    

     // Note that this code works ONLY with jpg files
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        PDDocument doc = null;
        try{
          /* Step 1: Prepare the document.
           */
         doc = new PDDocument();
         PDPage page = new PDPage();
         doc.addPage(page);

         

         /* Step 2: Prepare the image
          * PDJpeg is the class you use when dealing with jpg images.
          * You will need to mention the jpg file and the document to which it is to be added
          * Note that if you complete these steps after the creating the content stream the PDF
          * file created will show "Out of memory" error.
          */
         

         PDXObjectImage image = null;
         image = new PDJpeg(doc, new FileInputStream("image.jpg"));

         

         /* Create a content stream mentioning the document, the page in the dcoument where the content stream is to be added.
          * Note that this step has to be completed after the above two steps are complete.
          */
         PDPageContentStream content = new PDPageContentStream(doc, page);

 

       /* Step 3:
        * Add (draw) the image to the content stream mentioning the position where it should be drawn
        * and leaving the size of the image as it is
        */

         content.drawImage(image,20,20);
         content.close();

       

         /* Step 4:
          * Save the document as a pdf file mentioning the name of the file
          */
        

        doc.save("ImageNowPdf.pdf");
       

        } catch (Exception e){
             System.out.println("Exception");
        }
    }
}

 

Extracting text from a PDF file:

If you are interested in extracting text from a PDF file, you will need to learn about the PDFTextStripper class. This is found in the package org.apache.pdfbox.util

You can use the constructor PDFTextStripper() to create a new object. Be aware that it throws an IOException. Here are some methods to extract text

As you would have realised the PDF file from where the data is to be extracted has already been loaded onto the PDDocument (refer to previous sections) object.

Make sure you use the close() method from the PDDocument class to close the PDF file.

Here is a sample code that covers most of all that we learnt.

import java.io.*;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.*;
import org.apache.pdfbox.util.*;

public class PDFTest {

 public static void main(String[] args){
 PDDocument pd;
 BufferedWriter wr;
 try {
         File input = new File("C:\\Invoice.pdf");  // The PDF file from where you would like to extract
         File output = new File("C:\\SampleText.txt"); // The text file where you are going to store the extracted data
         pd = PDDocument.load(input);
         System.out.println(pd.getNumberOfPages());
         System.out.println(pd.isEncrypted());
         pd.save("CopyOfInvoice.pdf"); // Creates a copy called "CopyOfInvoice.pdf"
         PDFTextStripper stripper = new PDFTextStripper();
         wr = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream(output)));
         stripper.writeText(pd, wr);
         if (pd != null) {
             pd.close();
         }
        // I use close() to flush the stream.
        wr.close();
 } catch (Exception e){
         e.printStackTrace();
        }
     }
}

Here is some code to extract phone numbers from a PDF file. Try it out!! If you want to know more about the PDF specification, click here.

Installing previous versions of PDFBox:

3. You can now write your code. Refer to the FAQs above if you have other problems

1. Download this jar file

http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/pdfbox/1.6.0/pdfbox-app-1.6.0.jar

2. Add this jar file with its full path to your CLASSPATH. Make sure your CLASSPATH has a .; added before your entry. Here is how my CLASSPATH entry looks like.

.;C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\Downloads\pdfbox-app-1.6.0.jar

(Note: If you find it difficult to set the CLASSPATH refer to this page.)

3. You can now write your code. Refer to the FAQs above if you have other problems

1. Download this file.

http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/pdfbox/1.5.0/pdfbox-app-1.5.0.jar

2. Add the file with its full path to your CLASSPATH. Make sure your CLASSPATH has a .; added before your entry. Here is how my CLASSPATH entry looks like.

.;C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\Downloads\pdfbox-app-1.5.0.jar

(Note: If you find it difficult to set the CLASSPATH refer to this page.)

3. You can now write your code. Refer to the FAQs above if you have other problems


Version 1.4.0

1. Download this file.

http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/pdfbox/1.4.0/pdfbox-app-1.4.0.jar

2. Add the file with its full path to your CLASSPATH. Make sure your CLASSPATH has a .; added before your entry. Here is how my CLASSPATH entry looks like.

.;C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\Downloads\pdfbox-app-1.4.0.jar

(Note: If you find it difficult to set the CLASSPATH refer to this page.)

3. You can now write your code. Refer to the FAQs above if you have other problems

Version 1.3.1

1. Download this file.

http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/pdfbox/1.3.1/pdfbox-app-1.3.1.jar

2. Add the file with its full path to your CLASSPATH. Make sure your CLASSPATH has a .; added before your entry. Here is how my CLASSPATH entry looks like.

.;C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\Downloads\pdfbox-app-1.3.1.jar

(Note: If you find it difficult to set the CLASSPATH refer to this page.)

3. You can now write your code. Refer to the FAQs above if you have other problems

Version 1.0.0 (Refer to next section for Version 1.1.0)

1. Download the following file and extract its contents.

2. Add the following jars to your CLASSPATH.

commons-logging-1.1.1.jar
found under folder path pdfbox-1.0.0-bin\pdfbox1.0.0\external

fontbox-1.0.0.jar
found under folder path pdfbox-1.0.0-bin\pdfbox-1.0.0\external

jempbox-1.0.0.jar
found under folder path pdfbox-1.0.0-bin\pdfbox-1.0.0\external

pdfbox-1.0.0.jar
found under folder path pdfbox-1.0.0-bin\pdfbox-1.0.0

On my computer, the CLASSPATH is

.;C:\Documents and Settings\Stephen\My Documents\pdfbox-1.0.0-bin\pdfbox-1.0.0\external\commons-logging-1.1.1.jar;C:\Documents and Settings\Stephen\My Documents\pdfbox-1.0.0-bin\pdfbox-1.0.0\external\fontbox-1.0.0.jar;C:\Documents and Settings\Stephen\My Documents\pdfbox-1.0.0-bin\pdfbox-1.0.0\external\jempbox-1.0.0.jar;C:\Documents and Settings\Stephen\My Documents\pdfbox-1.0.0-bin\pdfbox-1.0.0\pdfbox-1.0.0.jar;

(Note: If you find it difficult to set the CLASSPATH refer to this page.)

3. You can now write your code. Make sure you import the necessary classes.

Version 1.1.0

1. Download the following files.

2. Extract the contents of commons-logging-1.1.1-bin.zip. The file that we need, which is, "commons-logging-1.1.1.jar" is found under the folder path commons-logging-1.1.1-bin\commons-logging-1.1.1

3. Add the following jars to your CLASSPATH.

commons-logging-1.1.1.jar
pdfbox-1.1.0.jar
fontbox-1.1.0.jar
jempbox-1.1.0.jar

(Note: If you find it difficult to set the CLASSPATH refer to this page.)

4. You can now write your code. Make sure you import the necessary classes.

Feedback and suggestions welcome at steve@printmyfolders.com

 

All the best!
Steve