iText/BouncyCastle ClassNotFound org.bouncycastle.asn1.DEREncodable and org.bouncycastle.tsp.TimeStampTokenInfo

Solution 1:

iText marks bouncycastle dependencies as optional. If you require them, you need to add the dependencies in your own pom file.

To find out which dependency to include in your project, open the itextpdf pom.xml file of the version you are using (for example 5.3.2, here) and search for the 2 bouncycastle dependencies.

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId>
        <artifactId>bcprov-jdk15on</artifactId>
        <version>1.47</version>
        <optional>true</optional>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId>
        <artifactId>bcmail-jdk15on</artifactId>
        <version>1.47</version>
        <optional>true</optional>
    </dependency>

Copy them into your pom file and remove the optional option.

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.itextpdf</groupId>
        <artifactId>itextpdf</artifactId>
        <version>5.3.2</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId>
        <artifactId>bcprov-jdk15on</artifactId>
        <version>1.47</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId>
        <artifactId>bcmail-jdk15on</artifactId>
        <version>1.47</version>
    </dependency>

Solution 2:

BouncyCastle libs are undergoing heavy API changes that broke the compatibility with other libs like iText.

Either

• use a previous version of BouncyCastle libs. Old versions can be found here. However, you'll have to find the right version of iText that was compatible with this particular version of BC.

• make your own build of iText (the SVN trunk has been fixed). iText can be build with Maven (there's a short readme file at the root of the SVN). Please note that it's at your own risk, there may be bugs in trunk.

• wait for the next version of iText. From my experience, iText releases come every couple of months, sometime more often, sometimes less. I'm not an iText committer though, so I can't give you any ETA.

More information can be found in this thread

Solution 3:

With itextpdf version 5.5.4 org.bouncycastle dependencies are marked as <optional>true</optional>. This means you MUST include those dependencies in your own pom, or you can run into classnotfound exceptions.

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.itextpdf</groupId>
    <artifactId>itextpdf</artifactId>
    <version>5.5.4</version>
</dependency>

<!-- Bouncycastle dependencies necessary as they are optional = true
    in itextpdf ... but they're not-so-optional in reality -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId>
    <artifactId>bcprov-jdk15on</artifactId>
    <version>1.49</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId>
    <artifactId>bcpkix-jdk15on</artifactId>
    <version>1.49</version>
</dependency>

Solution 4:

from version of bcprov-jdk15on-147, class of DEREncodable is no longer exist under the path of org.bouncycastle.asn1. You can use version before 146 (including 146) to resolve this question.