[java] How to merge two PDF files into one in Java?

I want to merge many PDF files into one using PDFBox and this is what I've done:

PDDocument document = new PDDocument();
for (String pdfFile: pdfFiles) {
    PDDocument part = PDDocument.load(pdfFile);
    List<PDPage> list = part.getDocumentCatalog().getAllPages();
    for (PDPage page: list) {
        document.addPage(page);
    }
    part.close();
}
document.save("merged.pdf");
document.close();

Where pdfFiles is an ArrayList<String> containing all the PDF files.

When I'm running the above, I'm always getting:

org.apache.pdfbox.exceptions.COSVisitorException: Bad file descriptor

Am I doing something wrong? Is there any other way of doing it?

This is a ready to use code, merging four pdf files with itext.jar from http://central.maven.org/maven2/com/itextpdf/itextpdf/5.5.0/itextpdf-5.5.0.jar, more on http://tutorialspointexamples.com/

import com.itextpdf.text.Document;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfContentByte;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfImportedPage;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfReader;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfWriter;

/**
 * This class is used to merge two or more 
 * existing pdf file using iText jar.
 */
public class PDFMerger {

static void mergePdfFiles(List<InputStream> inputPdfList,
        OutputStream outputStream) throws Exception{
    //Create document and pdfReader objects.
    Document document = new Document();
    List<PdfReader> readers = 
            new ArrayList<PdfReader>();
    int totalPages = 0;

    //Create pdf Iterator object using inputPdfList.
    Iterator<InputStream> pdfIterator = 
            inputPdfList.iterator();

    // Create reader list for the input pdf files.
    while (pdfIterator.hasNext()) {
            InputStream pdf = pdfIterator.next();
            PdfReader pdfReader = new PdfReader(pdf);
            readers.add(pdfReader);
            totalPages = totalPages + pdfReader.getNumberOfPages();
    }

    // Create writer for the outputStream
    PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, outputStream);

    //Open document.
    document.open();

    //Contain the pdf data.
    PdfContentByte pageContentByte = writer.getDirectContent();

    PdfImportedPage pdfImportedPage;
    int currentPdfReaderPage = 1;
    Iterator<PdfReader> iteratorPDFReader = readers.iterator();

    // Iterate and process the reader list.
    while (iteratorPDFReader.hasNext()) {
            PdfReader pdfReader = iteratorPDFReader.next();
            //Create page and add content.
            while (currentPdfReaderPage <= pdfReader.getNumberOfPages()) {
                  document.newPage();
                  pdfImportedPage = writer.getImportedPage(
                          pdfReader,currentPdfReaderPage);
                  pageContentByte.addTemplate(pdfImportedPage, 0, 0);
                  currentPdfReaderPage++;
            }
            currentPdfReaderPage = 1;
    }

    //Close document and outputStream.
    outputStream.flush();
    document.close();
    outputStream.close();

    System.out.println("Pdf files merged successfully.");
}

public static void main(String args[]){
    try {
        //Prepare input pdf file list as list of input stream.
        List<InputStream> inputPdfList = new ArrayList<InputStream>();
        inputPdfList.add(new FileInputStream("..\\pdf\\pdf_1.pdf"));
        inputPdfList.add(new FileInputStream("..\\pdf\\pdf_2.pdf"));
        inputPdfList.add(new FileInputStream("..\\pdf\\pdf_3.pdf"));
        inputPdfList.add(new FileInputStream("..\\pdf\\pdf_4.pdf"));


        //Prepare output stream for merged pdf file.
        OutputStream outputStream = 
                new FileOutputStream("..\\pdf\\MergeFile_1234.pdf");

        //call method to merge pdf files.
        mergePdfFiles(inputPdfList, outputStream);     
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    }
}

A quick Google search returned this bug: "Bad file descriptor while saving a document w. imported PDFs".

It looks like you need to keep the PDFs to be merged open, until after you have saved and closed the combined PDF.

Using iText (existing PDF in bytes)

    public static byte[] mergePDF(List<byte[]> pdfFilesAsByteArray) throws DocumentException, IOException {

    ByteArrayOutputStream outStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    Document document = null;
    PdfCopy writer = null;

    for (byte[] pdfByteArray : pdfFilesAsByteArray) {

        try {
            PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(pdfByteArray);
            int numberOfPages = reader.getNumberOfPages();

            if (document == null) {
                document = new Document(reader.getPageSizeWithRotation(1));
                writer = new PdfCopy(document, outStream); // new
                document.open();
            }
            PdfImportedPage page;
            for (int i = 0; i < numberOfPages;) {
                ++i;
                page = writer.getImportedPage(reader, i);
                writer.addPage(page);
            }
        }

        catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

    }

    document.close();
    outStream.close();
    return outStream.toByteArray();

}

Multiple pdf merged method using org.apache.pdfbox:

public void mergePDFFiles(List<File> files,
                          String mergedFileName) {
    try {
        PDFMergerUtility pdfmerger = new PDFMergerUtility();
        for (File file : files) {
            PDDocument document = PDDocument.load(file);
            pdfmerger.setDestinationFileName(mergedFileName);
            pdfmerger.addSource(file);
            pdfmerger.mergeDocuments(MemoryUsageSetting.setupTempFileOnly());
            document.close();
        }
    } catch (IOException e) {
        logger.error("Error to merge files. Error: " + e.getMessage());
    }
}

From main program, call mergePDFFiles method using list of files and target file name.

        String mergedFileName = "Merged.pdf";
        mergePDFFiles(files, mergedFileName);

After calling mergePDFFiles, load merged file

        File mergedFile = new File(mergedFileName);

package article14;

import java.io.File;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPage;
import org.apache.pdfbox.util.PDFMergerUtility;

public class Pdf
{
    public static void main(String args[])
    {
        new Pdf().createNew();
        new Pdf().combine();
        }

    public void combine()
    {
        try
        {
        PDFMergerUtility mergePdf = new PDFMergerUtility();
        String folder ="pdf";
        File _folder = new File(folder);
        File[] filesInFolder;
        filesInFolder = _folder.listFiles();
        for (File string : filesInFolder)
        {
            mergePdf.addSource(string);    
        }
    mergePdf.setDestinationFileName("Combined.pdf");
    mergePdf.mergeDocuments();
        }
        catch(Exception e)
        {

        }  
    }

public void createNew()
{
    PDDocument document = null;
    try
    {
        String filename="test.pdf";
        document=new PDDocument();
        PDPage blankPage = new PDPage();
        document.addPage( blankPage );
        document.save( filename );
    }
    catch(Exception e)
    {

    }
}

}

If you want to combine two files where one overlays the other (example: document A is a template and document B has the text you want to put on the template), this works:

after creating "doc", you want to write your template (templateFile) on top of that -

   PDDocument watermarkDoc = PDDocument.load(getServletContext()
                .getRealPath(templateFile));
   Overlay overlay = new Overlay();

   overlay.overlay(watermarkDoc, doc);