function that can use iText to concatenate / merge pdfs together - causing some issues
Solution 1:
There are errors once in a while because you are using the wrong method to concatenate documents. Please read chapter 6 of my book and you'll notice that using PdfWriter
to concatenate (or merge) PDF documents is wrong:
- You completely ignore the page size of the pages in the original document (you assume they are all of size A4),
- You ignore page boundaries such as the crop box (if present),
- You ignore the rotation value stored in the page dictionary,
- You throw away all interactivity that is present in the original document, and so on.
Concatenating PDFs is done using PdfCopy
, see for instance the FillFlattenMerge2 example:
Document document = new Document();
PdfCopy copy = new PdfSmartCopy(document, new FileOutputStream(dest));
document.open();
PdfReader reader;
String line = br.readLine();
// loop over readers
// add the PDF to PdfCopy
reader = new PdfReader(baos.toByteArray());
copy.addDocument(reader);
reader.close();
// end loop
document.close();
There are other examples in the book.
Solution 2:
In case anyone is looking for it, using Bruno Lowagie's correct answer above, here is the version of the function that does not seem to have the page flipping issue i described above:
public static void concatenatePdfs(List<File> listOfPdfFiles, File outputFile) throws DocumentException, IOException {
Document document = new Document();
FileOutputStream outputStream = new FileOutputStream(outputFile);
PdfCopy copy = new PdfSmartCopy(document, outputStream);
document.open();
for (File inFile : listOfPdfFiles) {
PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(inFile.getAbsolutePath());
copy.addDocument(reader);
reader.close();
}
document.close();
}