How to work with PDF files in Java using Apache PDFBox?
Jul 10, 2025 pm 12:45 PMApache PDFBox is a common tool for processing PDF files in Java, supporting creation, reading, merging and adding watermarks. 1. Create PDF: Use PDDocument and PDPageContentStream to add pages and write contents; 2. Read content: Extract text through PDFTextStripper, but the scanned file cannot be recognized; 3. Merge files: Use PDFMergerUtility to add multiple source files and merge outputs; 4. Add watermark: Create transparent layers after loading the document and draw watermark text or images on the specified page. Be sure to close the document object after the operation is completed to avoid memory leakage.
Processing PDF files is a common requirement in Java, especially when generating reports, manipulating documents, or extracting content. Apache PDFBox is a powerful and open source library that can be used to create, manipulate, and extract PDF content. Here are some common operations implementation methods.

Create a new PDF file
If you need to generate a PDF from scratch, PDFBox provides basic API support.
-
First add dependencies (Maven example):
<dependency> <groupId>org.apache.pdfbox</groupId> <artifactId>pdfbox</artifactId> <version>2.0.27</version> </dependency>
Basic steps to create and write content:
- Create a document object using
PDDocument
. - Add a page and write text or graphics through
PDPageContentStream
. - Finally, remember to close the flow and documents to avoid resource leakage.
Sample code snippet:

PDDocument document = new PDDocument(); PDPage page = new PDPage(); document.addPage(page); try (PDPageContentStream contentStream = new PDPageContentStream(document, page)) { contentStream.beginText(); contentStream.setFont(PDType1Font.HELVETICA_BOLD, 12); contentStream.newLineAtOffset(50, 700); contentStream.showText("Hello, PDFBox!"); contentStream.endText(); } document.save("output.pdf"); document.close();
Read the contents of an existing PDF file
Extracting text content in PDF is another common task, such as doing keyword search or data extraction.
This task can be easily accomplished using the PDFTextStripper
class:
PDDocument document = PDDocument.load(new File("input.pdf")); PDFTextStripper stripper = new PDFTextStripper(); String text = stripper.getText(document); System.out.println(text); document.close();
Note: Some PDFs are in the form of scanned or pictures. Such files cannot directly extract text and require OCR technical assistance.
Merge multiple PDF files
Sometimes you need to synthesize several PDFs into one, PDFBox's PDFMergerUtility
can do this.
The usage is roughly as follows:
- Create
PDFMergerUtility
instance. - Add multiple input sources.
- Set the output target.
- Call
mergeDocuments()
method to merge.
Example:
PDFMergerUtility merger = new PDFMergerUtility(); merger.addSource("file1.pdf"); merger.addSource("file2.pdf"); merger.setDestinationFileName("merged_output.pdf"); merge.mergeDocuments(null);
Add a watermark or signature page
Adding a watermark or attaching a signature page to the PDF can be achieved by overlaying a new layer.
Basic ideas:
- Load the original document.
- Create a new transparent layer.
- Draw watermark text or image on this layer.
- Overlay the layer on each page or on a specified page.
This part is a little more complicated and involves the use of PDPageContentStream
and PDImageXObject
. If you just add text watermarks, you can add translucent text at the top of each page in a similar way to create a PDF.
Basically these common operations. PDFBox has many functions, but the above are the most common scenarios encountered. When I first use it, I may feel that the class name is a bit confusing, but I will get familiar with it after trying it a few more times. It should be noted that remember to close the document object after operation, otherwise it will easily cause memory leakage.
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