How to add PDFBox to an Android project or suggest alternative

Question

I'm attempting to open an existing pdf file and then add another page to the pdf document from within an Android application. On the added page, I need to add some text and an image.

I am wanting to give PDFBox a try. Other solutions such as iTextPDF aren't suitable for our company because of the licencing terms/price.

I have a library project with the main code base, and also full and lite projects that reference the library project.

I have downloaded the jar from http://pdfbox.apache.org/download.html and copied it into the library projects lib folder and added the pdfbox-app-1.6.0.jar file to the java build path libraries.

I am able to import the librarys successfully eg import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument; and compile all the projects. However when I run the application it crashes on PDDocument document = new PDDocument(); with the following error.

E/AndroidRuntime(24451): java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument

I read somewhere that version 1.5 of PDFBox onwards didn't work with Android so I tried downloading the pdfbox-app-1.4.0.jar file but got the same issue. I also added the library to the build path in my full and lite projects but I got the same error or eclipse kept crashing with an out of memory error.

Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong? Have I downloaded the wrong file? Have I imported it correctly?

Thanks,

Just add PDFBoxResourceLoader.init(getApplicationContext()); at start — Angel, Feb 17 '23 at 11:50

sherpya · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-25T04:27:57.013

19

PDFBox uses java awt and swing, even for non UI tasks, I've tried to remove references but there are a lot of files, and I was removing too much stuff

I've just tested PDFjet http://pdfjet.com/os/edition.html it's bsd licensed (plus commercial version with more features), with this sample code (ripped from Example_03.java) I was able to convert a jpeg to a pdf

    FileOutputStream fos = null;
    try
    {
        fos = new FileOutputStream("/sdcard/sample.pdf");
        PDF pdf = new PDF(fos);
        InputStream f = getApplicationContext().getAssets().open("img0.jpg"); 
        Image image = new Image(pdf, f, ImageType.JPEG);
        Page page = new Page(pdf, A4.PORTRAIT);
        image.setPosition(0, 0);
        image.drawOn(page);
        pdf.flush();
        fos.close();
    } catch (Exception e)
    {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

I found the link here http://java-source.net/open-source/pdf-libraries

edited Jan 25 '12 at 04:27

answered Jan 25 '12 at 02:11

sherpya

4,890
2
34
50

2

Please let me know if you are aware of any examples which achieve the reverse i.e. PDF->Image using PDFJet. I've gone through most of the examples.All of them seem to be passing an instance of new FileOutputStream to the PDF() constructor method, which I believe is suggestive of the fact that we are trying to create a new PDF. Instead what I seek is the ability to read/parse an existing pdf. Thanks. – Sdr Apr 10 '13 at 18:47
1

@sherpya how to integrate PDFjet into android project? – Chirag Shah May 07 '13 at 08:00
1

I did it some time ago, but I think you can just put the .jar in the lib subdirectory of the project – sherpya May 07 '13 at 13:17

score 16 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 25 '16 at 15:56

16

Android Port of PDFBox

There's a free Android Port of PDFBox available here:

https://github.com/TomRoush/PdfBox-Android

edited Dec 25 '16 at 15:56

Tilman Hausherr

17,731
7
58
97

answered Jan 11 '15 at 13:20

Jason

13,563
15
74
125

4

This lib is very restricted – Roman Soviak Apr 16 '18 at 11:18

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 17 '23 at 11:50

I got the same error. I've solved this way, the documentation says:

Before calls to PDFBox are made it is required to initialize the library's resource loader. Add the following line before calling PDFBox methods:

PDFBoxResourceLoader.init(getApplicationContext());

An example app is located in the sample directory and includes examples of common tasks.

To read a PDF from Uri with PDFBox i just do:

@Override
protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, @Nullable Intent data) {
    if (requestCode == ESCOGER_DOCUMENTO_REQUEST_CODE) {
        if (resultCode == RESULT_OK && data != null) {
            Uri archivo = data.getData();
            switch (extensionArchivo(this, archivo)) {
                case "jpg":
                case "png":
                    //Procesar imagen
                    break;
                case "pdf":
                    PDFBoxResourceLoader.init(getApplicationContext());
                    ContentResolver contentResolver = getContentResolver();      // Get a content resolver to access the Uri
                    InputStream inputStream = null;                              // Open an input stream to the Uri
                    try {
                        inputStream = contentResolver.openInputStream(archivo);
                    } catch (IOException e) {
                        //Log.e("PdfBox-Android-Sample", "Exception thrown while loading document to strip", e);
                    }
                    String parsedText = null;                                    // Load the PDF document from the input stream
                    PDDocument document = null;
                    try {
                        document = PDDocument.load(inputStream);
                    } catch (IOException e) {
                        //Log.e("PdfBox-Android-Sample", "Exception thrown while loading document to strip", e);
                    }

                    try {
                        PDFTextStripper pdfStripper = new PDFTextStripper();
                        pdfStripper.setStartPage(0);
                        pdfStripper.setEndPage(1);
                        parsedText = "Parsed text: " + pdfStripper.getText(document);
                    } catch (IOException e) {
                        //Log.e("PdfBox-Android-Sample", "Exception thrown while stripping text", e);
                    } finally {
                        try {
                            if (document != null) document.close();
                        } catch (IOException e) {
                            //Log.e("PdfBox-Android-Sample", "Exception thrown while closing document", e);
                        }
                    }
                    Toast.makeText(this, parsedText, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
                    break;
                default:
                    // Salir y mostrar mensaje "Archivo no permitido"
            }

        } else {
            Toast.makeText(this, "Error al subir documento", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
        }
    }
    super.onActivityResult(requestCode, resultCode, data);
}

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 24 '12 at 02:15

0

i think the library class files are not included in the apk file. The library classes need to be converted into dex files then only it will be detected.please refer http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/building/index.html

answered Jan 24 '12 at 02:15

sateesh

121
1
3

Thanks for the response. Do I need to convert the jar file to a dex file? – Dittimon Jan 24 '12 at 03:02
yes or the classes files need to be convert to dex files while compiling. – sateesh Jan 24 '12 at 23:43

How to add PDFBox to an Android project or suggest alternative

4 Answers4

Android Port of PDFBox

Linked

Related