iText in Action 2nd Edition

The ShowTextMargins example is part of the book iText in Action (ISBN 9781935182610).

It's a small standalone application. You can use this example for inspiration, but please buy the book if there's something you don't understand about the example. Read Chapter 15 for more info.

Chapter 15: Page content and structure

Keywords for this example: Existing PDFs, Parsing PDF, PdfReader, Parsing PDF > retrieving page margins

If you want this example to work, you need the following jars: iText.jar

This example uses the following resources: preface.pdf.

part4.chapter15.ShowTextMargins

If you compile and execute this example, you'll get the following result:

margins.pdf

You can download the full source code of ShowTextMargins, or read it here:

/*
 * This class is part of the book "iText in Action - 2nd Edition"
 * written by Bruno Lowagie (ISBN: 9781935182610)
 * For more info, go to: http://itextpdf.com/examples/
 * This example only works with the AGPL version of iText.
 */
 
package part4.chapter15;
 
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
 
import com.itextpdf.text.DocumentException;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfContentByte;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfReader;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfStamper;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.parser.PdfReaderContentParser;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.parser.TextMarginFinder;
 
public class ShowTextMargins {
 
    /** The original document. */
    public static final String PREFACE = "resources/pdfs/preface.pdf";
    /** The new document to which we've added a border rectangle. */
    public static final String RESULT = "results/part4/chapter15/margins.pdf";
 
    /**
     * Parses a PDF and ads a rectangle showing the text margin.
     * @param src the source PDF
     * @param dest the resulting PDF
     */
    public void addMarginRectangle(String src, String dest)
        throws IOException, DocumentException {
        PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(src);
        PdfReaderContentParser parser = new PdfReaderContentParser(reader);
        PdfStamper stamper = new PdfStamper(reader, new FileOutputStream(RESULT));
        TextMarginFinder finder;
        for (int i = 1; i <= reader.getNumberOfPages(); i++) {
            finder = parser.processContent(i, new TextMarginFinder());
            PdfContentByte cb = stamper.getOverContent(i);
            cb.rectangle(finder.getLlx(), finder.getLly(),
                finder.getWidth(), finder.getHeight());
            cb.stroke();
        }
        stamper.close();
        reader.close();
    }
 
    /**
     * Main method.
     * @param    args    no arguments needed
     * @throws DocumentException 
     * @throws IOException
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, DocumentException {
        new ShowTextMargins().addMarginRectangle(PREFACE, RESULT);
    }
}