PDFOne (for Java)
Create, edit, view, print & enhance PDF documents and forms in Java SE/EE

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Home » Newsletter » March 2012

By V. Subhash

Gnostice PDFOne is a versatile PDF SDK for implementing PDF-related features in Java applications. PDFOne can create, edit, view, print, encrypt, decrypt, merge, split, reorganize, bookmark, annotate, watermark, and stamp PDF documents. PDFOne can also process PDF forms or AcroForms - create, edit, fill, and flatten form fields. The API hides the complexity of the PDF format and enables developers to quickly implement sophisticated PDF features. PDFOne is entirely self-contained and written in 100% Java code. It does not depend on external software such as Adobe PDF SDK, GhostScript or FreeType.

PDFOne is meant to work with Oracle Java 1.4 or later. Hence, we expect PDFOne-powered applications to work on Windows, Linux, Mac OSX, and Solaris. You can use PDFOne in popular Java IDEs such as Eclipse and NetBeans. You can view PDFOne API docs within your IDE. You can also deploy your PDFOne-powered applications using Ant.

PDFOne Packages

PDFOne provides several components and classes for implemented PDF-related functions. The API is spread over several packages. To use PDFOne, you need to be familiar with only a few members of these packages.

Main PDFOne Components

Let us examine the main component classes to get a feel of the API.

• com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfDocument: This class represents a PDF document component. You need to create an instance of this class to create a new PDF document or read/modify an existing one. Creating a document is simple.

  // Create a new document object - This automatically creates
  // a blank new page if you do not load an existing document
  PdfDocument doc = new PdfDocument();
  
  // Render some text on page 1
  doc.writeText("Hello, world!", 100, 100);
  
  // Save document to file
  doc.save("sample_doc.pdf");
  
  // Close I/O resources used for the document
  doc.close();
  

  Loading an existing document is also very easy.

  // Create a new document object
  PdfDocument doc = new PdfDocument();
  
  // Load an existing PDF document
  doc.load("sample_doc.pdf");
  
  // Detect number of pages in the document
  System.out.println("samle_doc.pdf has " + doc.getPageCount() + " pages.");
  
  // Close I/O resources used for the document
  doc.close();
  

  The PdfDocument class provides methods to add pages, text, images, shapes, headers, footers, tables, watermarks, annotations, form fields, bookmarks, digital signatures, PDF actions and file attachments to documents. It also has methods for specifying encryption, usage restrictions, and viewer preferences. There are methods to reorganise PDF pages (merge, split, extract, insert), export page content as text or image, parse page content, and even search and redact text content.
• com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfPrinter: This class represents the PDF printer component and can be used to print PDF documents.

  // Create a printer object
  PdfPrinter prn = new PdfPrinter();
  
  // Load a document
  prn.loadDocument("sample_doc.pdf");
  
  // Get a list of printers
  String sPrinters[] = prn.getAvailablePrinterNames();
  
  // If there are any printers
  if (sPrinters.length > 0) {
    // Select the first printer
    prn.setSelectedPrinterName(sPrinters[0]);
    // Print a print range for just once
    prn.print("1,3-4", 1);
  }
  
  // Close document
  prn.closeDocument();
  

• com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfViewer: This class represents the PDF viewer component and is used to display PDF documents.
  
  

  PDF Viewer bean component on a JFrame in NetBeans

Sample PDFOne Classes

PDFOne has several other helper classes representing various PDF features, document elements and implementation requirements. Let us check a few of them.

• com.gnostice.pdfone.PDFOne: This class contains a method activate() for activating your license key. To ensure that this method is called only once by your application, you need to put this method in a static block.

  static {
    PDFOne.activate("product key", "activation key");
  }
  

• com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfPage: This class represents a PDF page. It has page-specific content-creation methods similar to the PdfDocument class. You can create an independent PDF page using an instance of this class, create content using its methods, and add it to the current document.

  // Create a new page
  PdfPage page2 = new PdfPage(PdfPageSize.A4);
  
  // Write some text on the new page
  page2.writeText("Hello again, world!", 100, 100);
  
  // Add the page to document
  doc.add(page2);
  

  Or, you can access a page of an existing document as a PdfPage instance.

  // Obtain page #2
  PdfPage page2 = doc.getPage(2);
  
  // Write text on page #2
  page2.writeText("This text will be on page 2",
                  300.0,       // x-coordinate
                  150.0);      // y-coordinate
  

• com.gnostice.pdfone.fonts.PdfFont: This class represents a PDF font. If you want to render text using a particular font, then you need to create a PdfFont object, specify its properties, and pass it as an argument to one of the text-rendering methods. If you do not explicitly specify a font, PdfDocument will choose Arial or Helvetica. For specifying a different font, you neeed to create a PdfFont instance.

  // Create a PdfDocument instance with the reader
  PdfDocument doc = new PdfDocument(r);
  
  // Create font objects
  PdfFont fontArialItalic
                = PdfFont.create("Arial",    // name of installed font
            	    PdfFont.ITALIC | PdfFont.STROKE_AND_FILL,
                  18,
                  PdfEncodings.WINANSI);
  PdfFont fontTahomaNormal
                = PdfFont.create("tahoma.ttf", // pathname of a font file
                  PdfFont.STROKE_AND_FILL,
                  48,
                  PdfEncodings.WINANSI);
  
  // Write text on page 1 using the Arial font created above
  doc.writeText("Hello again, World!",
                fontArialItalic,   // font
                100, 50);
  
  // Set font properties
  fontTahomaNormal.setStrokeWidth(2);
  fontTahomaNormal.setStrokeColor(Color.RED);
  fontTahomaNormal.setColor(Color.ORANGE);
  
  // Write more text on page 1 using Tahoma
  doc.writeText("Hello again, World!",
                fontTahomaNormal,   // font
                100, 100);
  

  

  Text-rendering using PDFFont class

• com.gnostice.pdfone.PdfAnnot: This class represents a PDF annotation. Annotations are typically used to annotate or mark up content on a PDF page. As PdfAnnot is an abstract class, you will need to use instances of classes derived from it, such as PdfTextAnnot, PdfCaretAnnot, PdfMarkupAnnot, PdfWatermarkAnnot and PdfInkAnnot.
  

  PDF annotations created by the PdfAnnot derivatives

I guess by now you would have had a good feel of the PDFOne API. Now, let us go over the main features of PDFOne.

Main PDFOne Features

• General I/O
  • Create PDF documents from scratch
  • Read PDF documents from files and streams
  • Save PDF documents to files and streams
  • Launch, print, or e-mail document after creation
• PDF Creation
  • Render text, shapes and images on pages
  • Specify opacity level for rendered text, shapes and images
  • Create form fields
  • Add annotations, watermarks, bookmarks, page headers, footers
  • Add PDF actions to bookmarks [URI, go-to, remote go-to, launch, JavaScript, and named]
  • Insert page-level and document-level file attachments
  • Add document properties [Title, Subject, Author, Keyword…]
• PDF Enhancement
  • Add digital signatures
  • Fill, modify, and flatten form fields
  • Edit and delete annotations, bookmarks
  • Encrypt/decrypt documents and specify document usage restrictions
  • Embed, remove and replace fonts in the document
• PDF Processing
  • Parse PDF page elements [text, shapes, images, form fields, annotations & custom appearances]
  • Export page content as text and raster images
  • Search text using literal strings and regular expressions
  • Redact text matches of literal strings and regular expressions
  • Redact text in specific page-regions
• PDF Rendering
  • Display PDF documents in desktop applications and applets
  • Display interactive PDF bookmarks in desktop applications and applets
  • Print pdf pages [whole document, page ranges, rotation, scaling]
  • Send page text to printer as real text, instead of 2D path drawings

Get PDFOne (for Java) Now

• Download PDFOne Java Trial
• Buy PDFOne Java registered version