Covert a PDF to PDF/A format using iText

[Anup Bansal]

I need to convert PDF files to conform to PDF/A format.
How can I achieve this? Can I use iText.jar for this?

[Ulf Dittmer]

I don't think so; iText is for creating PDFs, not for making structural changes after the fact.

[Anup Bansal]

I tried iText by first reading a PDF and then re-creating the PDF with the PDF version set 10 1.4 and conformance set to PDF-1A.
I validated the generated PDF using an external tool but it gave some issues.

Following is the snippet of the code:

  
	public void convert() {
		System.out.println("PDF to PDF/A");
		// step 1: creation of a document-object
		Document document = new Document();
		PdfReader reader = null;
		try {

			// step 2:
			// we create a writer that listens to the document
			// and directs a PDF-stream to a file
			PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.getInstance(document,
					new FileOutputStream(
							"D:\\!Anup\\Project\\PDFArchiving\\iText\\Temp\\PDFATest2.pdf"));
			writer.setPDFXConformance(PdfWriter.PDFA1B);
			writer.setPdfVersion(PdfWriter.PDF_VERSION_1_4);
			// step 3: we open the document
			document.open();
			PdfContentByte cb = writer.getDirectContent(); // Holds the PDF data


			// step 4:

			reader = new PdfReader("D:\\!Anup\\20100630120447.pdf");
			PdfImportedPage page;
			// Get number of pages:
			int pageCount = reader.getNumberOfPages();
			for (int i = 0; i < pageCount; i++) {
				document.newPage();
				page = writer.getImportedPage(reader, i+1);
				cb.addTemplate(page, 0, 0);
			}

		} catch (DocumentException de) {

			System.err.println(de.getMessage());

		} catch (IOException ioe) {

			System.err.println(ioe.getMessage());

		}
		// step 5: we close the document
		document.close();

	}  

Could you please suggest me other ways of achieveing this?

[Ulf Dittmer]

Setting version and conformance levels in iText does not alter a document; it merely specifies what operations are allowed from that point on. So it doesn't have the desired effect in this case.

[Anup Bansal]

How can I achieve this format conversion? Is there any other jars available for the same?

[Ulf Dittmer]

Not to my knowledge; certainly no freely available ones. PDF is not amenable to a lot of changes after its creation; while some modifications are possible, structural alterations within pages generally aren't.

It's possible that Adobe has a native library you could license for this purpose.