Management of PDF files

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WLanguage functions

Standard functions

PDF functions

Management of PDF files

Overview

Simple operations on PDF files

Advanced operations on PDF files

See also

Management of PDF files

Overview

PDF is one of the most widely used formats for transmitting and storing electronic documents.

Several methods can be used to create or manage PDF files:

Printing in PDF files: PDF files can be created when printing both via the report editor and WLanguage.
For more details, see Printing in PDF.
Viewing PDF files via the PDF Reader control.
For more details, see The PDF Reader control.
Simple operations on PDF files in WLanguage: Check protection, extract a page, merge PDFs, etc.
Advanced operations on PDF files using different types of variables.

Simple operations on PDF files

Various functions allow you to perform simple operations on PDF files. These functions directly handle the PDF file:


PDFIsProtected	Checks whether the PDF file requires a password in order to be read.
PDFExtractPage	Returns an Image type variable containing a page from a PDF file.
PDFMerge	Merges several existing PDF files into a single PDF file. The files are merged one after another. The paths of PDF files can be found in an array.
PDFMergeWithPassword	Merges several existing and password-protected PDF files into a single PDF file.
PDFPassword	Protects a PDF document with a password.
PDFNumberOfPages	Returns the total number of pages found in a PDF file.
PDFToText	Extracts the text found in a PDF file.

Advanced operations on PDF files

To handle more simply the content of a PDF file, WLanguage offers different types of variables:


pdfDocument	The pdfDocument type is used to get all the advanced characteristics of a PDF document loaded in memory.
pdfTextElement	The pdfTextElement type is used to find out all the characteristics of a text element in a PDF page.
pdfPage	The pdfPage type is used to define all the advanced characteristics of a page from a PDF document loaded in memory.
pdfParameter	The pdfParameter type defines all the characteristics of the PDF file to be generated.
pdfAttachment	The pdfAttachment type is used to define all the advanced characteristics of an attachment in a PDF document.
pdfSignature	The pdfSignature type is used to define the advanced characteristics of the signature that will be applied to a PDF file when signing an existing PDF (via PDFSign).

A pdfDocument variable allows loading the content of a PDF file in memory. For example:

MyPDF is pdfDocument = PDFOpen("test.pdf")

MySecondPDF is pdfDocument = "C:\temp\examplePDF.pdf"

From this variable, it is possible to access the pages of the PDF document and for each page, the text of the PDF document. For example:

MyPDF is pdfDocument = "test.pdf"

FOR EACH DocumentPage OF MyPDF.Page
FOR EACH PageElement OF DocumentPage.TextElement
Trace(PageElement.Text)
END
END

With these types of variables, it is possible to delete or add pages to a document using array management functions (Add, Delete, ... ) directly on the array of pdfPage variables contained in the pdfDocument variable.

Example:

MyPDFDoc is pdfDocument = PDFOpen("C:\temp\Myguide.pdf")
Trace(MyPDFDoc.PDFVersion)
Trace(MyPDFDoc.Author)
Trace(MyPDFDoc.Page.Count)
Trace(MyPDFDoc.Page[1].Width)
Trace(MyPDFDoc.Page[36].Height)

FOR EACH ATextElement OF MyPDFDoc.Page[2].TextElement
Trace(ATextElement.Text + " X = " +
ATextElement.X + " Y = " + ATextElement.Y + " L = " +
ATextElement.Width + " H = " + ATextElement.Height)
END

MyPDFDoc2 is pdfDocument = "C:\temp\plan.pdf"
// Add pages
Add(MyPDFDoc2.Page, MyPDFDoc.Page[5])
// Insert pages
Insert(MyPDFDoc2.Page, 1, MyPDFDoc.Page[32])
// Save modified PDF
PDFSave(MyPDFDoc2, "MyPDFDoc2.pdf")
ShellExecute("MyPDFDoc2.pdf")

Specific PDF functions allow managing pdfDocument variables:


PDFClose	Closes the PDF file loaded in memory in a pdfDocument variable.
PDFOpen	Opens a PDF document and loads it in a pdfDocument variable.
PDFSave	Saves the content of a pdfDocument variable in a ".PDF" file.

Remark: Binding to the PDF Reader control:

A pdfDocument variable can be assigned to a PDF Reader control.
A PDF document from a PDF Reader control can be retrieved in a pdfDocument variable.
Example:

MyPDFDoc is pdfDocument
MyPDFDoc = PDF_PDFReader