iText - add content to existing PDF file

Question

I want to do the following with iText:

(1) parse an existing PDF file

(2) add some data to it, on the existing single page of the document (such as a timesta

Answer 1

iText has more than one way of doing this. The PdfStamper class is one option. But I find the easiest method is to create a new PDF document then import individual pages from the existing document into the new PDF.

// Create output PDF
Document document = new Document(PageSize.A4);
PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, outputStream);
document.open();
PdfContentByte cb = writer.getDirectContent();

// Load existing PDF
PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(templateInputStream);
PdfImportedPage page = writer.getImportedPage(reader, 1); 

// Copy first page of existing PDF into output PDF
document.newPage();
cb.addTemplate(page, 0, 0);

// Add your new data / text here
// for example...
document.add(new Paragraph("my timestamp")); 

document.close();

This will read in a PDF from templateInputStream and write it out to outputStream. These might be file streams or memory streams or whatever suits your application.