pdfDeserializer

Summary

pdfDeserializer is a tool that deserializes your PDF syntax into iText objects. It takes a String representation of any of the standard PDF objects:

Token	Object
<< ... >>	Dictionary
[ ... ]	Array
/Name	Name
( abc )	String (Literal)
< 616263 >	String (Hexadecimal)
1.0	Number
1 0 R	Indirect Reference

And it will turn that into a usable com.itextpdf.kernel.pdf.PdfObject instance (of the appropriate subclass of course).

For example:

<</Type/Example/Reason (Because)>>

Would become:

Dictionary:
Name{ Type }	Name{ Example }
Name{ Reason }	String{ Because }

Building

This project is built using maven. After cloning, run the following command:

mvn package

After a successful build, your target folder should contain a pdfDeserializer-x.y.z.jar which you can then use in your projects!

You can also use mvn install so that the artifact is automatically installed into your local maven repository!

Usage

Add the pdfDeserializer dependency to your project and you can start using the tool as a high level tool:

String s = "<</Hello /World>>";
Deserializer deserializer = new Deserializer();
PdfObject deserializedDictionary = deserializer.deserialize(ByteUtils.getIsoBytes(s), new DeserializationContext());

Disclaimer

This is an experimental tool, not an iText product. It is provided to the community under the terms of the AGPL (see LICENSE) on an as-is basis.