Getting Started with Java

This tutorial downloads a known PDF, replaces Hello with Final on page 1, and writes the edited file to output.pdf. No account or API token is required. Anonymous output is watermarked.

1. Create a Maven project

Create src/main/java/EditPdf.java and a pom.xml in an empty directory. Java 17 or newer is required.

pom.xml

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>example</groupId>
  <artifactId>pdfdancer-java-demo</artifactId>
  <!-- This is the example application's version, not the PDFDancer SDK version. -->
  <version>1.0.0</version>
  <properties>
    <maven.compiler.release>17</maven.compiler.release>
  </properties>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.pdfdancer.client</groupId>
      <artifactId>pdfdancer-client-java</artifactId>
      <version>3.0.1</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.13.0</version>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

2. Download the input PDF

curl -L https://docs.pdfdancer.com/files/v3/pdfdancer-v3-quickstart.pdf -o input.pdf

3. Create EditPdf.java

import com.pdfdancer.client.rest.PDFDancer;
import com.pdfdancer.common.request.TextReplaceRequest;
import com.pdfdancer.common.response.TextEditResponse;

public class EditPdf {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        PDFDancer pdf = PDFDancer.createSession("input.pdf");
        TextEditResponse response = pdf.page(1).text().replace(
                TextReplaceRequest.literal("Hello", "Final").build());

        if (response.matched() == 0) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("The source text was not found");
        }
        if (response.errors() != null && !response.errors().isEmpty()) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("The edit failed: " + response.errors());
        }
        pdf.save("output.pdf");
    }
}

pdf.page(1).text() restricts the edit to page 1. Use pdf.text() to search the whole document.

4. Run it

mvn compile org.codehaus.mojo:exec-maven-plugin:3.5.0:java -Dexec.mainClass=EditPdf

The program exits without output when the edit succeeds. Open output.pdf and confirm that Hello became Final. If the program reports that the text was not found, see When visible text does not match.

Gradle users can add implementation("com.pdfdancer.client:pdfdancer-client-java:3.0.1").

Next, learn about text targeting and responses or other content types.