Convert pdf to byte[] and vice versa with pdfbox

java, pdf, pdf-generation, pdfbox

Solution

You can use Apache commons, which is essential in any java project IMO.

Then you can use FileUtils's `readFileToByteArray(File file)` and `writeByteArrayToFile(File file, byte[] data)`.

(here is commons-io, which is where FileUtils is: http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-io/download_io.cgi )

For example, I just tried this here and it worked beautifully.

try {
    File file = new File("/example/path/contract.pdf");
    byte[] array = FileUtils.readFileToByteArray(file);
    FileUtils.writeByteArrayToFile(new File("/example/path/contract2.pdf"), array);

} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Problem

I've read the documentation and the examples but I'm having a hard time putting it all together. I'm just trying to take a test pdf file and then convert it to a byte array then take the byte array and convert it back into a pdf file then create the pdf file onto disk. It probably doesn't help much, but this is what I've got so far: ``` package javaapplication1; import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream; import java.io.IOException; import org.apache.pdfbox.cos.COSStream; import org.apache.pdfbox.exceptions.COSVisitorException; import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument; public class JavaApplication1 { private COSStream stream; public static void main(String[] args) { try { PDDocument in = PDDocument.load("C:\\Users\\Me\\Desktop\\JavaApplication1\\in\\Test.pdf"); byte[] pdfbytes = toByteArray(in); PDDocument out; } catch (Exception e) { System.out.println(e); } } private static byte[] toByteArray(PDDocument pdDoc) throws IOException, COSVisitorException { ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream(); try { pdDoc.save(out); pdDoc.close(); } catch (Exception ex) { System.out.println(ex); } return out.toByteArray(); } public void PDStream(PDDocument document) { stream = new COSStream(document.getDocument().getScratchFile()); } } ```

Original source

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