How to merge two PDF files into one in Java?

This is a ready to use code, merging four pdf files with itext.jar from http://central.maven.org/maven2/com/itextpdf/itextpdf/5.5.0/itextpdf-5.5.0.jar, more on http://tutorialspointexamples.com/

import com.itextpdf.text.Document;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfContentByte;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfImportedPage;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfReader;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfWriter;

/**
 * This class is used to merge two or more 
 * existing pdf file using iText jar.
 */
public class PDFMerger {

static void mergePdfFiles(List<InputStream> inputPdfList,
        OutputStream outputStream) throws Exception{
    //Create document and pdfReader objects.
    Document document = new Document();
    List<PdfReader> readers = 
            new ArrayList<PdfReader>();
    int totalPages = 0;

    //Create pdf Iterator object using inputPdfList.
    Iterator<InputStream> pdfIterator = 
            inputPdfList.iterator();

    // Create reader list for the input pdf files.
    while (pdfIterator.hasNext()) {
            InputStream pdf = pdfIterator.next();
            PdfReader pdfReader = new PdfReader(pdf);
            readers.add(pdfReader);
            totalPages = totalPages + pdfReader.getNumberOfPages();
    }

    // Create writer for the outputStream
    PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, outputStream);

    //Open document.
    document.open();

    //Contain the pdf data.
    PdfContentByte pageContentByte = writer.getDirectContent();

    PdfImportedPage pdfImportedPage;
    int currentPdfReaderPage = 1;
    Iterator<PdfReader> iteratorPDFReader = readers.iterator();

    // Iterate and process the reader list.
    while (iteratorPDFReader.hasNext()) {
            PdfReader pdfReader = iteratorPDFReader.next();
            //Create page and add content.
            while (currentPdfReaderPage <= pdfReader.getNumberOfPages()) {
                  document.newPage();
                  pdfImportedPage = writer.getImportedPage(
                          pdfReader,currentPdfReaderPage);
                  pageContentByte.addTemplate(pdfImportedPage, 0, 0);
                  currentPdfReaderPage++;
            }
            currentPdfReaderPage = 1;
    }

    //Close document and outputStream.
    outputStream.flush();
    document.close();
    outputStream.close();

    System.out.println("Pdf files merged successfully.");
}

public static void main(String args[]){
    try {
        //Prepare input pdf file list as list of input stream.
        List<InputStream> inputPdfList = new ArrayList<InputStream>();
        inputPdfList.add(new FileInputStream("..\\pdf\\pdf_1.pdf"));
        inputPdfList.add(new FileInputStream("..\\pdf\\pdf_2.pdf"));
        inputPdfList.add(new FileInputStream("..\\pdf\\pdf_3.pdf"));
        inputPdfList.add(new FileInputStream("..\\pdf\\pdf_4.pdf"));


        //Prepare output stream for merged pdf file.
        OutputStream outputStream = 
                new FileOutputStream("..\\pdf\\MergeFile_1234.pdf");

        //call method to merge pdf files.
        mergePdfFiles(inputPdfList, outputStream);     
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    }
}

A quick Google search returned this bug: "Bad file descriptor while saving a document w. imported PDFs".

It looks like you need to keep the PDFs to be merged open, until after you have saved and closed the combined PDF.


Why not use the PDFMergerUtility of pdfbox?

PDFMergerUtility ut = new PDFMergerUtility();
ut.addSource(...);
ut.addSource(...);
ut.addSource(...);
ut.setDestinationFileName(...);
ut.mergeDocuments();

Tags:

Java

Pdf

Pdfbox