PDFBox 2.0 RC3 — Find and replace text

Question

How can one find and replace text inside a PDF document using PDFBox 2.0, they pulled the old example and it\'s syntax no longer works so I am wondering if it\'s still possi

Answer 1

You can try like this:

public static PDDocument replaceText(PDDocument document, String searchString, String replacement) throws IOException {
    if (Strings.isEmpty(searchString) || Strings.isEmpty(replacement)) {
        return document;
    }
    PDPageTree pages = document.getDocumentCatalog().getPages();
    for (PDPage page : pages) {
        PDFStreamParser parser = new PDFStreamParser(page);
        parser.parse();
        List tokens = parser.getTokens();
        for (int j = 0; j < tokens.size(); j++) {
            Object next = tokens.get(j);
            if (next instanceof Operator) {
                Operator op = (Operator) next;
                //Tj and TJ are the two operators that display strings in a PDF
                if (op.getName().equals("Tj")) {
                    // Tj takes one operator and that is the string to display so lets update that operator
                    COSString previous = (COSString) tokens.get(j - 1);
                    String string = previous.getString();
                    string = string.replaceFirst(searchString, replacement);
                    previous.setValue(string.getBytes());
                } else if (op.getName().equals("TJ")) {
                    COSArray previous = (COSArray) tokens.get(j - 1);
                    for (int k = 0; k < previous.size(); k++) {
                        Object arrElement = previous.getObject(k);
                        if (arrElement instanceof COSString) {
                            COSString cosString = (COSString) arrElement;
                            String string = cosString.getString();
                            string = StringUtils.replaceOnce(string, searchString, replacement);
                            cosString.setValue(string.getBytes());
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        // now that the tokens are updated we will replace the page content stream.
        PDStream updatedStream = new PDStream(document);
        OutputStream out = updatedStream.createOutputStream();
        ContentStreamWriter tokenWriter = new ContentStreamWriter(out);
        tokenWriter.writeTokens(tokens);
        page.setContents(updatedStream);
        out.close();
    }
    return document;
}