How to use PDFBox to Create / Read PDF in Java + Maven

Apache PDFBox is an open source library for Java to work with PDF documents.In this article, we will learn how to use PDFBox to Create / Read PDF in Java. 

In order to use Apache PDFBox we need to have the following dependencies added in your project.

• pdfbox-2.0.7.jar
• fontbox-2.0.7.jar
• commons-logging-1.2.jar

If you are running on maven add the below dependency to your pom.xml

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0	http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
	<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

	<groupId>com.javainterviewpoint</groupId>
	<artifactId>PDFBoxExample</artifactId>
	<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
	<packaging>jar</packaging>

	<name>PDFBoxExample</name>
	<url>http://maven.apache.org</url>

	<properties>
		<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
	</properties>

	<dependencies>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.apache.pdfbox</groupId>
			<artifactId>pdfbox</artifactId>
			<version>2.0.7</version>
		</dependency>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>junit</groupId>
			<artifactId>junit</artifactId>
			<version>3.8.1</version>
			<scope>test</scope>
		</dependency>
	</dependencies>

	<build>
		<plugins>
			<plugin>
				<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
				<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
				<version>3.7.0</version>
				<configuration>
					<source>1.8</source>
					<target>1.8</target>
				</configuration>
			</plugin>
		</plugins>
	</build>
</project>

How to use PDFBox to Create / Read PDF

PDFBox create PDF Example

package com.javainterviewpoint;
import java.io.IOException;

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

public class CreatePDF
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        //Creating a new document
        PDDocument document = new PDDocument();
        
        //Creating a new page and adding it to the document
        PDPage page = new PDPage();
        document.addPage(page);
        
        PDFont font = PDType1Font.HELVETICA_BOLD_OBLIQUE;
        
        try
        {
            //ContentStream holds the content
            PDPageContentStream contentStream = new PDPageContentStream(document,page);
                        
            //Set the starting offset for contentStream and font
            contentStream.beginText();
            contentStream.setFont(font, 14);
            //Text offset
            contentStream.newLineAtOffset(100, 500);
           
            //Display the mentioned text at the offset specified
            contentStream.showText("PDF created using Apache PDFBox 2.0");
            contentStream.endText();
         
            //Closing the contentStream
            contentStream.close();
            //Location for saving the pdf file
            document.save("c://JavaInterviewPoint//Hello.pdf");
            //Closing the document
            document.close();
        }
        catch(IOException ie)
        {
            ie.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

In order to create a new PDF all we need to do is

• Create a instance of PDDocument and PDPage

PDDocument document = new PDDocument();
PDPage page = new PDPage();

• Add the page to the document

document.addPage(page);

• Create a new PDPageContentStream instance passing the above created document and page

PDPageContentStream contentStream = new PDPageContentStream(document,page);

• Using the showText() method display the content which we need to display

contentStream.showText("PDF created using Apache PDFBox 2.0");
contentStream.endText();

• Finally, close the PDPageContentStream, PDDocument

document.save("c://JavaInterviewPoint//Hello.pdf");
document.close();

Changing PDFBox PDType0Font

By default PDFBox supports a standard set of 14 fonts listed below, which will always be available when consuming PDF documents.

Standard Font	Description
PDType1Font.TIMES_ROMAN	Times regular
PDType1Font.TIMES_BOLD	Times bold
PDType1Font.TIMES_ITALIC	Times italic
PDType1Font.TIMES_BOLD_ITALIC	Times bold italic
PDType1Font.HELVETICA	Helvetica regular
PDType1Font.HELVETICA_BOLD	Helvetica bold
PDType1Font.HELVETICA_OBLIQUE	Helvetica italic
PDType1Font.HELVETICA_BOLD_OBLIQUE	Helvetica bold italic
PDType1Font.COURIER	Courier
PDType1Font.COURIER_BOLD	Courier bold
PDType1Font.COURIER_OBLIQUE	Courier italic
PDType1Font.COURIER_BOLD_OBLIQUE	Courier bold italic
PDType1Font.SYMBOL	Symbol Set
PDType1Font.ZAPF_DINGBATS	Dingbat Typeface

In our previous example we have used “HELVETICA_BOLD” font, “PDType1Font” font supports only the above mentioned 14 fonts. In order to use a custom font then we have to use “PDType0Font” passing our custom font. lets look into the below example where we try to create a PDF with “CALIBRI” font.

package com.javainterviewpoint;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;

import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPage;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPageContentStream;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.font.PDFont;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.font.PDType0Font;

public class ChangeFont
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        // Creating a new document
        PDDocument document = new PDDocument();

        // Creating a new page and adding it to the document
        PDPage page = new PDPage();
        document.addPage(page);

        try
        {
            // Manually loading the font
            PDFont font = PDType0Font.load(document, new File("c://JavaInterviewPoint//calibri.ttf"));
            // ContentStream holds the content
            PDPageContentStream contentStream = new PDPageContentStream(document, page);

            // Set the starting offset for contentStream and font
            contentStream.beginText();
            contentStream.setFont(font, 14);
            // Text offset
            contentStream.newLineAtOffset(100, 500);

            // Display the mentioned text at the offset specified
            contentStream.showText("Changing the font - Apache PDFBox 2.0");
            contentStream.endText();

            // Closing the contentStream
            contentStream.close();
            // Location for saving the pdf file
            document.save("c://JavaInterviewPoint//Hello1.pdf");
            // Closing the document
            document.close();
        } catch (IOException ie)
        {
            ie.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

PDFBox Extract Text Line By Line

In order to extract Text from a PDF we need to use PDFTextStripper class, in the below example we will try to extract text from the first page of the PDF.

package com.javainterviewpoint;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;

import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.text.PDFTextStripper;

public class ExtractText
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        try
        {
            File file = new File("c://JavaInterviewPoint//Hello.pdf");
            //Reading the pdf file
            PDDocument document = PDDocument.load(file);
            
            //Get the number of pages
            System.out.println("Number of pages in the pdf :"+document.getNumberOfPages());
            
            //Strip the text from a particular page
            PDFTextStripper textStripper = new PDFTextStripper();
            //Lets read page 1
            textStripper.setStartPage(1);
            textStripper.setEndPage(1);
            System.out.println("Text in the pdf >>> "+textStripper.getText(document));
        }
        catch(IOException ie)
        {
            ie.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Output:

Number of pages in the pdf :1
Text in the pdf >>> PDF created using Apache PDFBox 2.0