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I am trying to add an existing PDF (created otherwise) to a PDF created with FPDF using FPDI. It seems to work find for most PDFs, but I get the following error:

FPDF error: Unable to find xref table.

After some testing, I figured out that if I use a PDF version of 1.4 or lower (Acrobat v5 or lower) it seems to work. Looking at the file it seems to be because of a different PDF format.

Is there a work around or solution to this? I have probably 10 000+ PDFs uploaded by users, some of the new working, some of them not. It's also annoying that FPDI just dies instead of causing some kind of error or even returning false

The only solution I can think of right now is to parse the first line of the PDF file to determine the version and only add the ones that over versions that will work.

Edit:

I also tried this in Zend_Pdf and it had the following result, using the demo file that comes with the Zend Framework:

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Zend_Pdf_Exception' with message 'Cross-reference streams are not supported yet.' in /Volumes/Documents/temp/ZendFramework-1.7.7/library/Zend/Pdf/Parser.php:331
Stack trace:
#0 /Volumes/Documents/temp/ZendFramework-1.7.7/library/Zend/Pdf/Parser.php(455): Zend_Pdf_Parser->_loadXRefTable('116')
#1 /Volumes/Documents/temp/ZendFramework-1.7.7/library/Zend/Pdf.php(297): Zend_Pdf_Parser->__construct('/Volumes/Docume...', Object(Zend_Pdf_ElementFactory_Proxy), true)
#2 /Volumes/Documents/temp/ZendFramework-1.7.7/library/Zend/Pdf.php(250): Zend_Pdf->__construct('/Volumes/Docume...', NULL, true)
#3 /Volumes/Documents/temp/ZendFramework-1.7.7/demos/Zend/Pdf/demo.php(37): Zend_Pdf::load('/Volumes/Docume...')
#4 {main}
  thrown in /Volumes/Documents/temp/ZendFramework-1.7.7/library/Zend/Pdf/Parser.php on line 331

Is it impossible to parse PDFs greater than 1.4?

Darryl Hein
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7 Answers7

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You can use FPDI with TCPDF, it will generate and read (with FPDI) version 1.7 PDFs.

See TCPDF - PHP class for PDF.

EDIT

I have recently been challenged with the issue of using various versions and formats of PDF with FPDI and TCPDF, and I can confirm that PDF versions above 1.4 are hit and miss, the interesting thing is that I have a lot of working 1.7 PDFs, and works about 50/50 on 1.5 and 1.6.

I worked around the issue by converting all non-workable PDF files to v1.4 using GhostScript which you can exec from the command line. Use ps2pdf14 from the GhostScript lib folder.

uınbɐɥs
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Gavin
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  • I wouldn't have expected the command `ps2pdf14` to work with PDF as input but it worked like a charm. – jeteon Jan 24 '16 at 22:29
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I've just released a pair of projects (TCPDI / tcpdi_parser, based on FPDI and tcpdf_parser, respectively) which work with TCPDF 6 (and FPDF_TPL) to import PDFs above v1.4 (tested up to 1.6 so far, but I'll make sure it works with 1.7 once I find a 1.7 PFD to test it with!) without requiring any commercial addons. Basic installation and usage instructions can be found in the TCPDI README; please feel free to try it out and report any issues via the Github tracker.

NullColaShip
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  • I just tried it, trying to add text to a PDF v.1.5 and it doesn't work. – greg Feb 20 '17 at 12:41
  • @greg, if your PDF is not password-protected, please file an issue on the relevant project (TCPDI or tcpdi_parser) with full details of what you're trying to do and what happened (i.e. what error(s) you get). I'll try to investigate, but can't make any promises on time frame. – NullColaShip Feb 20 '17 at 21:49
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Setasign is offering a PDF parser as a commercial addon to FPDI. We had no troubles parsing PDF files up to version 1.7 so far using the new parser.

uberboom
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  • Can you please share with us how you worked with this add-on? Because I have no clue as to how to use it. Ive installed the file, not sure how to use it. Im using the following PDFmerger github.com/myokyawhtun/PDFMerger/blob/master/PDFMerger.php#L‌​78 – hello_its_me Apr 24 '17 at 07:17
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I found that using commerical version of FPDI PDF-Parser solved my problem. I've been using it for a year now and haven't had any PDFs it couln't parse (unless the PDF was corrupt or had something else weird going on).

Darryl Hein
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  • Can you please share with us how you worked with this add-on? Because I have no clue as to how to use it. Ive installed the file, not sure how to use it. Im using the following PDFmerger https://github.com/myokyawhtun/PDFMerger/blob/master/PDFMerger.php#L78 – hello_its_me Apr 18 '17 at 14:51
  • Why did you duplicate [an answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/1807937) instead of accepting it? – gre_gor Jun 01 '23 at 04:26
  • @gre_gor Hmmmm, that is odd. I'm not sure why I would have done that. Seems like others have done the same thing. – Darryl Hein Jun 01 '23 at 13:52
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for symfony, I used this lib to convert >1.4 https://packagist.org/packages/xthiago/pdf-version-converter

bouali atmane
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    You know...I think I actually implemented something like this at one point to deal with this an other issues. I just call ghostscript directly in my case, but this might make life a bit easier. – Darryl Hein Feb 19 '16 at 18:36
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    I'm the author of `xthiago/pdf-version-converter`. The library can be used in any PHP project - it no requires the use of Symfony Framework (Full Stack). The library internally uses two components of Symfony (process and filesystem), but composer takes care about it. I recommend you the use of the library because it has unit tests (PHPUnit) and is open-source - you can benefit of bug fixes and enhancements made by community. – xthiago Sep 24 '16 at 01:15
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If you have Acrobat PDF writer, you can manipulate the job settings to make the PDF you are printing/savingAs to be compatible to PDF 1.4. For the tiny reason I need this product, it doesn't seem worth the 100 euros to get the commercial version that is compatible to versions greater than 1.4.

katieb
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my team had removed some part of the code. we stopped the code from adding watermark to the pdf. this solved the problem for us. PDF >= 1.5

Shawn
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