How to Merge two Document objects using itextsharp

Question

I have two Document objects

How does one Merge these two Document objects using itextsharp?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2233129/merging-pdfs-with-itextsharp — Morten Anderson, Oct 28 '13 at 21:20
As itext has evolved considerably in the recent months and years, pointing towards answers from 2010 and 2011 are not necessarily helpful. — mkl, Oct 28 '13 at 22:31
I was going to flag this as a duplicate but the question is slightly different than usually asked. Instead of merging two PDFs, the OP is asking how to merge two `Document` objects. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there is no way to merge two `Document` objects. These objects are helper classes that abstract away the intricacies of the PDF file format. One of the "costs" of these abstractions is that you are limited to a single document. However, as others have pointed out, you can create separate PDFs (even in-memory) and then merge them. — Chris Haas, Oct 29 '13 at 01:35

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 29 '13 at 19:21

As per Mr. Haas (with the help of his code somewhere on SO),

"Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there is no way to merge two Document objects. These objects are helper classes that abstract away the intricacies of the PDF file format. One of the "costs" of these abstractions is that you are limited to a single document. However, as others have pointed out, you can create separate PDFs (even in-memory) and then merge them."

So i did just that:

I used the PdfCopyFields object.

MemoryStream realfinalStream = new MemoryStream();
MemoryStream[] realstreams = { stream,new MemoryStream(finalStream.ToArray()) };

using (realfinalStream)
       {
           //Create our copy object
           PdfCopyFields copy = new PdfCopyFields(realfinalStream);

           //Loop through each MemoryStream
           foreach (MemoryStream ms in realstreams)
           {
               //Reset the position back to zero
               ms.Position = 0;
               //Add it to the copy object
               copy.AddDocument(new PdfReader(ms));
               //Clean up
               ms.Dispose();
           }
           //Close the copy object
           copy.Close();
       }
return File(new MemoryStream(realfinalStream.ToArray()), "application/pdf","hello.pdf");

FYI

new MemoryStream(realfinalStream.ToArray())

I did that because the MemoryString was closed.

*I did that because the MemoryString was closed.* - `PdfCopy` just like any `PdfWriter` can be told not to close the output stream when itself being closed. Simply do `copy.SetCloseStream(false)` before `copy.Close()`. — mkl, Oct 29 '13 at 19:56

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 24 '13 at 15:34

A little more easier on the palate:

You have to take the PDF Document memory streams and merge them together!

Here is a simple function that will accomplish this!

        public MemoryStream MemoryStreamMerger(List<MemoryStream> streams)
        {

            MemoryStream OurFinalReturnedMemoryStream;
            using (OurFinalReturnedMemoryStream = new MemoryStream())
            {
                //Create our copy object
                PdfCopyFields copy = new PdfCopyFields(OurFinalReturnedMemoryStream);

                //Loop through each MemoryStream
                foreach (MemoryStream ms in streams)
                {
                    //Reset the position back to zero
                    ms.Position = 0;
                    //Add it to the copy object
                    copy.AddDocument(new PdfReader(ms));
                    //Clean up
                    ms.Dispose();
                }
                //Close the copy object
                copy.Close();

                //Get the raw bytes to save to disk
                //bytes = finalStream.ToArray();
            }
            return new MemoryStream(OurFinalReturnedMemoryStream.ToArray());

        }

How to Merge two Document objects using itextsharp

2 Answers2