How can I convert a PDF file to an image?

Question

I'm giving users the ability to upload an image to my Air app, then displaying this image in an image control. But I need to allow for PDF uploading in the same manner, so I need to convert the PDF to an image. I only care about the first page of the PDF they upload for now.

What I'm doing is: 1) User browses for a file with the file reference control 2) User chooses the image or PDF to upload 3) I encode said image to base64 and store it 4) I then load from that base64 with something like:

public function decodeImage(b64String:String):void{
  var decoder:Base64Decoder = new Base64Decoder();
  decoder.decode(b64String);
  var imgLoader:Loader = new Loader();
  imgLoader.loadBytes(decoder.toByteArray());
  imgLoader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE,decodedImageLoaded);
}

private function decodedImageLoaded(event:Event):void{
  var imgLoader:Loader = (event.target as LoaderInfo).loader;
  var bmp:Bitmap = Bitmap(imgLoader.content);
  imgLoader.removeEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, decodedImageLoaded);
  var img:Image = new Image();
  img.source = bmp;
  this.addChild(img);
}

This method is working great for .gif, .jpg, and .png. At some point in my process, probably the initial upload I need to convert the first page of a PDF to a png so that I can use the rest of this process.

I welcome any ideas with the sole requirement being that it has to be a part of the Air app, I can't use something like ImageMagick that runs on a server, but I could use a component that I can compile in to the finished product.

Answer 1

I believe AlivePDF for Flash now has capabilities to read a PDF file. You might try PurePDF, as well. You could potentially use ones of these to get that desired page and convert it to an image.

Answer 2

Hi invertedSpear

Have you seen swftools? It has the ability to convert a PDF to a SWF, PNG, JPG, etc...