Is there a straight forward way to append one PDF doc to another using iTextSharp?

Question

I've scoured the Web looking for examples on how to do this. I've found a few that seem to be a little more involved then they need to be. So my question is, using iTextSharp, is there a fairly concise way to append one PDF document to another one?

Optimally this would NOT involve a third file. Just open the first PDF doc, append the second PDF doc to the first and then close them both.

Answer 1

Have you asked on the Itext mailing list which is very active....

Answer 2

Yes. I've seen a class called PdfManipulation posted in an iText forum. Using that class would involve a third file though.

The class is originally in VB.Net. I downloaded it from a post on vbforums.com. Apparently though, it doesn't have the merge files function, so I wrote one based on the code in that class.

This was written on a machine without iTextSharp. This might have bugs. I'm not even sure if page numbers are 0-based or 1-based. But give it a shot.

public static void MergePdfFiles(IEnumerable<string> files, string output) {
 iTextSharp.text.Document doc;
 iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfCopy pdfCpy;

 doc = new iTextSharp.text.Document();
 pdfCpy = new iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfCopy(doc, new System.IO.FileStream(output, System.IO.FileMode.Create));
 doc.Open();

 foreach (string file in files) {
  // initialize a reader
  iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfReader reader = new iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfReader(file);
  int pageCount = reader.NumberOfPages;

  // set page size for the documents
  doc.SetPageSize(reader.GetPageSizeWithRotation(1));

  for (int pageNum = 1; pageNum <= pageCount; pageNum++) {
   iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfImportedPage page = pdfCpy.GetImportedPage(reader, pageNum);
   pdfCpy.AddPage(page);
  }

  reader.Close();
 }

 doc.Close();
}

Answer 3

I don't know how to do it for PDF files, but for postscript, you just concatenate the files. If you have pdf2ps and ps2pdf installed, the below will do the job:

pdf2ps file1.pdf file1.ps
pdf2ps file2.pdf file2.ps
cat file1.ps file2.ps > combined.ps
ps2pdf combined.ps combined.pdf

I'm not an expert on pdf2ps or ps2pdf. I've only ever used ps2pdf, and when I do so, it leaves text as text (I can still select and copy text from the resulting pdf). When I do the above steps (pdf->ps, combine, ps->pdf) I end up with a resulting pdf that is like an image. No idea why.

Answer 4

Ok, It's not straight forward, but it works and is surprisingly fast. (And it uses a 3rd file, no such thing as open and append.) I 'discovered' this in the docs/examples. Here's the code:

private void CombineMultiplePDFs( string[] fileNames, string outFile ) {
 int pageOffset = 0;
 ArrayList master = new ArrayList();
 int f = 0;

 Document document = null;
 PdfCopy writer = null;
 while ( f < fileNames.Length ) {
  // we create a reader for a certain document
  PdfReader reader = new PdfReader( fileNames[ f ] );
  reader.ConsolidateNamedDestinations();
  // we retrieve the total number of pages
  int n = reader.NumberOfPages;
  ArrayList bookmarks = SimpleBookmark.GetBookmark( reader );
  if ( bookmarks != null ) {
   if ( pageOffset != 0 ) {
    SimpleBookmark.ShiftPageNumbers( bookmarks, pageOffset, null );
   }
   master.AddRange( bookmarks );
  }
  pageOffset += n;

  if ( f == 0 ) {
   // step 1: creation of a document-object
   document = new Document( reader.GetPageSizeWithRotation( 1 ) );
   // step 2: we create a writer that listens to the document
   writer = new PdfCopy( document, new FileStream( outFile, FileMode.Create ) );
   // step 3: we open the document
   document.Open();
  }
  // step 4: we add content
  for ( int i = 0; i < n; ) {
   ++i;
   if ( writer != null ) {
    PdfImportedPage page = writer.GetImportedPage( reader, i );
    writer.AddPage( page );
   }
  }
  PRAcroForm form = reader.AcroForm;
  if ( form != null && writer != null ) {
   writer.CopyAcroForm( reader );
  }
  f++;
 }
 if ( master.Count > 0 && writer != null ) {
  writer.Outlines = master;
 }
 // step 5: we close the document
 if ( document != null ) {
  document.Close();
 }
}

Answer 5

hi Both the above methods some how not displaying the contents.

The first solution diplays content only in the first page whereas the second solution doesnot display any contents in all the pages...I nedd a solution for merging of files.......

Answer 6

I really may be missing something, but I did something much simpler. I concede this solution probably won't update bookmarks (as in the best answer here so far), but it works flawlessly for me. Since I was merging documents with fillable forms, I used PdfCopyFields instead of PdfCopy.

Here is the code (I've stripped all error handling to make the actual code more visible, add a try..finally to close opened resources if you plan on using the code):

    void MergePdfStreams(List<Stream> Source, Stream Dest)
    {
        PdfCopyFields copy = new PdfCopyFields(Dest);

        foreach (Stream source in Source)
        {
            PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(source);
            copy.AddDocument(reader);
        }

        copy.Close();
    }

You can pass any stream, be it a FileStream, a MemoryStream (useful when reading the PDF from databases, no need for temporary files, etc.)

Sample usage:

    void TestMergePdfStreams()
    {
        List<Stream> sources = new List<Stream>()
        {
            new FileStream("template1.pdf", FileMode.Open),
            new FileStream("template2.pdf", FileMode.Open),
            new MemoryStream((byte[])someDataRow["PDF_COLUMN_NAME"])
        };

        MergePdfStreams(sources, new FileStream("MergedOutput.pdf", FileMode.Create));
    }

Answer 7

First of all, Thank you very much for your great explanation, and excuse me for my gramatical errors, i don't know speak english very much. I have a big problem, i just finished an application that merge many pdf file in only one pdf, and add a bookmark by pdf file added. But in the bookmarks appear a numeric part like that(1.1.3. Page one), i need to delete the numeric part, it's very important. Could you please say me any idea for do that????? Thank you in advanced for your help and best regards.