Why PDFBox Is Gaining Popularity Among Java Developers

Overview

Apache PDFBox is an open‑source Java library from the Apache Software Foundation for reading, writing and manipulating PDF files.

License: Apache License 2.0. Repository: https://github.com/apache/pdfbox. Documentation: https://pdfbox.apache.org. Actively maintained 2.x and 3.x branches (e.g., 2.0.37, 3.0.8).

Reasons for adoption

Apache 2.0 license eliminates per‑seat or per‑call fees.

Pure Java implementation integrates via Maven or Gradle and works with Spring Boot, micro‑services and batch jobs.

Feature set includes PDF creation, merging/splitting, form handling, text extraction, image conversion, PDF/A validation, printing/rendering and digital signatures.

Provides command‑line utilities for quick validation and batch processing.

Active community with regular releases and issue tracker.

Core capabilities

Text extraction : Unicode text can be read with PDFTextStripper.

Merge / split : Combine multiple PDFs or split a document page‑by‑page using PDDocument and PDPage.

Form handling : Read and fill PDF form fields via PDAcroForm and PDField.

PDF/A validation : Check compliance with standards such as PDF/A‑1b.

Printing / rendering : Use Java printing API or PDFRenderer to produce PNG/JPEG images.

PDF creation : Embed fonts, insert images and generate new documents with PDDocument, PDPage, PDPageContentStream, etc.

Digital signatures : Add electronic signatures via SignatureInterface.

Typical processing flow

Upload a PDF → backend loads the document with PDFBox → perform parsing, transformation or validation → return the processed result.

Getting started

Step 1 – Add Maven dependency

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.pdfbox</groupId>
    <artifactId>pdfbox</artifactId>
    <version>3.0.8</version>
</dependency>

Step 2 – Minimal demo

The following class creates a simple PDF containing “Hello, PDFBox!” and then extracts the text.

import org.apache.pdfbox.Loader;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPage;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPageContentStream;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.font.PDType1Font;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.font.Standard14Fonts;
import org.apache.pdfbox.text.PDFTextStripper;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;

public class PdfBoxQuickStart {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        File pdfFile = new File("hello.pdf");
        createSimplePdf(pdfFile);
        System.out.println("PDF generated: " + pdfFile.getAbsolutePath());

        String text = extractText(pdfFile);
        System.out.println("Extracted text:");
        System.out.println(text);
    }

    private static void createSimplePdf(File outputFile) throws IOException {
        try (PDDocument document = new PDDocument()) {
            PDPage page = new PDPage();
            document.addPage(page);
            try (PDPageContentStream stream = new PDPageContentStream(document, page)) {
                stream.beginText();
                stream.setFont(new PDType1Font(Standard14Fonts.FontName.HELVETICA), 24);
                stream.newLineAtOffset(100, 700);
                stream.showText("Hello, PDFBox!");
                stream.endText();
            }
            document.save(outputFile);
        }
    }

    private static String extractText(File pdfFile) throws IOException {
        // PDFBox 3.x uses Loader.loadPDF()
        try (PDDocument document = Loader.loadPDF(pdfFile)) {
            PDFTextStripper stripper = new PDFTextStripper();
            stripper.setSortByPosition(true);
            return stripper.getText(document);
        }
    }
}

Step 3 – Compile and run

# Compile
javac -cp "target/dependency/*" PdfBoxQuickStart.java

# Run (Maven projects may need mvn dependency:copy-dependencies first)
java -cp ".;target/dependency/*" PdfBoxQuickStart

Step 4 – Expected output

PDF generated: /path/to/hello.pdf
Extracted text:
Hello, PDFBox!

Step 5 – Next exploration topics

Merge / split PDFs – core classes: PDDocument, PDPage Read / fill forms – core classes: PDAcroForm, PDField Convert PDF to PNG / JPEG – core class: PDFRenderer Digital signatures – core class:

SignatureInterface