iTextSharp v5 - How do you concatenate PDFs in memory? - pdf

Question

I am having trouble merging PDFs in-memory. I have 2 memory streams, a master and component stream, the idea is that as each component PDF is built up, the component PDF's bytes are added to the master stream. At the very end of all the components, we have a byte array that's a PDF.
I have the code below, but nothing is copying into my masterStream. I think the issue is with CopyPagesTo, but I'm not familiar enough and the documentation/examples are hard to find.
byte[] updated;
using (MemoryStream masterMemoryStream = new MemoryStream())
{
masterStream.WriteTo(masterMemoryStream);
// Read from master stream (ie. all existing components)
masterMemoryStream.Position = 0;
using (iText.Kernel.Pdf.PdfWriter masterPdfWriter = new iText.Kernel.Pdf.PdfWriter(masterMemoryStream))
using (iText.Kernel.Pdf.PdfDocument masterPdfDocument = new iText.Kernel.Pdf.PdfDocument(masterPdfWriter))
{
using (MemoryStream componentMemoryStream = new MemoryStream())
{
componentStream.WriteTo(componentMemoryStream);
// Read from new component
componentMemoryStream.Position = 0;
using (iText.Kernel.Pdf.PdfReader componentPdfReader = new iText.Kernel.Pdf.PdfReader(componentMemoryStream))
using (iText.Kernel.Pdf.PdfDocument componentPdfDocument = new iText.Kernel.Pdf.PdfDocument(componentPdfReader))
{
// Copy pages from component into master
componentPdfDocument.CopyPagesTo(1, componentPdfDocument.GetNumberOfPages(), masterPdfDocument);
}
}
}
updated = masterMemoryStream.GetBuffer();
}
// Write updates to master stream?
masterStream.SetLength(0);
using (MemoryStream temp = new MemoryStream(updated))
temp.WriteTo(masterStream);
Answer
This is mkl's answer with some of my corrections:
using (MemoryStream temporaryStream = new MemoryStream())
{
masterStream.Position = 0;
componentStream.Position = 0;
using (PdfDocument combinedDocument = new PdfDocument(new PdfReader(masterStream), new PdfWriter(temporaryStream)))
using (PdfDocument componentDocument = new PdfDocument(new PdfReader(componentStream)))
{
componentDocument.CopyPagesTo(1, componentDocument.GetNumberOfPages(), combinedDocument);
}
byte[] temporaryBytes = temporaryStream.ToArray();
masterStream.Position = 0;
masterStream.SetLength(temporaryBytes.Length);
masterStream.Capacity = temporaryBytes.Length;
masterStream.Write(temporaryBytes, 0, temporaryBytes.Length);
}

Answer 1

There are a number of issues in your code. I'll first give you a working version and then go into the issues in your code.
A working version (with an important limitation)
You can combine two PDFs given in MemoryStream instances masterStream and componentStream and get the result in the same MemoryStream instance masterStream as follows:
using (MemoryStream temporaryStream = new MemoryStream())
{
masterStream.Position = 0;
componentStream.Position = 0;
using (PdfDocument combinedDocument = new PdfDocument(new PdfReader(masterStream), new PdfWriter(temporaryStream)))
using (PdfDocument componentDocument = new PdfDocument(new PdfReader(componentStream)))
{
componentDocument.CopyPagesTo(1, componentDocument.GetNumberOfPages(), combinedDocument);
}
byte[] temporaryBytes = temporaryStream.ToArray();
masterStream.Position = 0;
masterStream.Capacity = temporaryBytes.Length;
masterStream.Write(temporaryBytes, 0, temporaryBytes.Length);
masterStream.Position = 0;
}
The limitation is that you have to have instantiated the masterStream with an expandable capacity; the MemoryStream class has a number of constructors only some of which create such an expandable instance while the others create non-resizable instances. For details read here.
Issues in your concept and code
Concatenating PDF files does not result in a valid merged PDF
You describe your concept like this
the idea is that as each component PDF is built up, the component PDF's bytes are added to the master stream
This does not work, though, the PDF format does not allow merging PDFs by simply concatenating them. In particular the (active) objects in a PDF have an identifier number which must be unique in the PDF, concatenating would result in a file with non-unique object identifiers; PDFs contain cross reference structures which map each object identifier to its offset from the file start, concatenating would get all these offsets wrong for the added PDFs; furthermore, a PDF has to have a single root object from which the other objects are referenced directly or indirectly, concatenating would result in multiple root objects.
Writing and immediately overwriting
In your code you have
masterStream.WriteTo(masterMemoryStream);
// Read from master stream (ie. all existing components)
masterMemoryStream.Position = 0;
using (iText.Kernel.Pdf.PdfWriter masterPdfWriter = new iText.Kernel.Pdf.PdfWriter(masterMemoryStream))
Here you write the contents of masterStream to masterMemoryStream, then set the masterMemoryStream position to the start and instantiate a PdfWriter which starts writing there. I.e. your original copy of the masterStream contents get overwritten, surely not what you wanted.
Using MemoryStream.GetBuffer
MemoryStream.GetBuffer does not only return the data written into the MemoryStream by design but the whole buffer; i.e. there may be a lot of trash bytes after the actual PDF in what you retrieve here
updated = masterMemoryStream.GetBuffer();
This may cause PDF processors trying to process your result PDFs to be unable to open the file: PDFs have a pointer to the last cross references at their end, so if you have trash bytes following the actual end of your PDF, PDF processors may not find that pointer.
PS
As worked out in the comments, the code above works fine in case of constantly growing stream lengths (which usually will happen in the use case at hand) but in general one needs to restrict the stream size before writing the new content, e.g. like this:
...
masterStream.Position = 0;
masterStream.SetLength(temporaryBytes.Length); // <<<<
masterStream.Capacity = temporaryBytes.Length;
...