PDF operations in Java (Creating, merging pdf)

This program helps you to learn how you can create a new pdf and to perform merging operation in pdf.

This program can be useful in situation where you want to operate on pdf. You can use this program to make a pdf programmatically and then fill it with your data.

Note : You need to download the following jar pdfbox-1.5.0.jar and commons-logging-1.1.1.jar

First we will import the classes:

Listing 1: Importing classes:

import java.io.File;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPage;
import org.apache.pdfbox.util.PDFMergerUtility;

Here,

File is for defining the path from where we will read the pdf’s to be combined into a single pdf
PDDocument is for making a new PDF document
PDPage is used to make a new page inside this pdf
PDFMergerUtility is used to merge multiple pdf

Now, we will define the classes along with the main method,

Listing 2: Defining class with main method

public class Pdf
{
public static void main(String args[])
	{
		new Pdf().createNew();
		new Pdf().combine();
		}

Here,

createNew method is used to make a new pdf

combine method is used to combine multiple pdf

Now we define the combine method which will combine multiple pdf,

Listing 3: Combine Pdf

public void combine()
	{
		try
		{
		PDFMergerUtility mergePdf = new PDFMergerUtility();
		String folder ="pdf";
		File _folder = new File(folder);
		File[] filesInFolder;
		filesInFolder = _folder.listFiles();
		for (File string : filesInFolder)
		{
			mergePdf.addSource(string);		
		}
	mergePdf.setDestinationFileName("Combined.pdf");
	mergePdf.mergeDocuments();
		}
		catch(Exception e)
		{
			
		}	
	}

Here,

We will make an object of PDFMergerUtility which will be responsible for pdf combining.
We make a variable to hold the folder where all the pdf to be combined exists
We loop through each pdf in the folder and use the mergePdf.addSource to combine each pdf.
setDestinationFileName is used to set the name of the final combined pdf
mergeDocuments(); is used to merge the documents finally.

Listing 4: Create new PDF

public void createNew()
{
	PDDocument document = null;
	try
	{
		String filename="test.pdf";
		document=new PDDocument();
		PDPage blankPage = new PDPage();
		document.addPage( blankPage );
		document.save( filename );
	}
	catch(Exception e)
	{
		
	}
}

}

Here,

An object of PDDocument is made to make a new document.

We use PDPage to make a new page inside the pdf doc

The new page is added through addPage method

Now we save the document using the save method.

Full source code:

Listing 5: Full source code

package article14;

import java.io.File;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPage;
import org.apache.pdfbox.util.PDFMergerUtility;

public class Pdf
{
	public static void main(String args[])
	{
		new Pdf().createNew();
		new Pdf().combine();
		}
	
	public void combine()
	{
		try
		{
		PDFMergerUtility mergePdf = new PDFMergerUtility();
		String folder ="pdf";
		File _folder = new File(folder);
		File[] filesInFolder;
		filesInFolder = _folder.listFiles();
		for (File string : filesInFolder)
		{
			mergePdf.addSource(string);		
		}
	mergePdf.setDestinationFileName("Combined.pdf");
	mergePdf.mergeDocuments();
		}
		catch(Exception e)
		{
			
		}	
	}

public void createNew()
{
	PDDocument document = null;
	try
	{
		String filename="test.pdf";
		document=new PDDocument();
		PDPage blankPage = new PDPage();
		document.addPage( blankPage );
		document.save( filename );
	}
	catch(Exception e)
	{
		
	}
}

}

Pdf operations in Java(Creating, merging pdf)