itext - Is it possible to merge several pdfs using iText7

Question

I have several datasheets for products. Each is a separate file. What I want to do is to use iText to generate a summary / recommended set of actions, based on answers to a webform, and then append to that all the relevant datasheets. This way, I only need to open one new tab in the browser to print all information, rather than opening one for the summary, and one for each datasheet that is needed.

So, is it possible to do this using iText?

Answer 1

Yes, you can merge PDFs using iText 7. E.g. look at the iText 7 Jump-Start tutorial sample C06E04_88th_Oscar_Combine, the pivotal code is:

PdfDocument pdf = new PdfDocument(new PdfWriter(dest));
PdfMerger merger = new PdfMerger(pdf);

//Add pages from the first document
PdfDocument firstSourcePdf = new PdfDocument(new PdfReader(SRC1));
merger.merge(firstSourcePdf, 1, firstSourcePdf.getNumberOfPages());

//Add pages from the second pdf document
PdfDocument secondSourcePdf = new PdfDocument(new PdfReader(SRC2));
merger.merge(secondSourcePdf, 1, secondSourcePdf.getNumberOfPages());

firstSourcePdf.close();
secondSourcePdf.close();
pdf.close();

(C06E04_88th_Oscar_Combine method createPdf)

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Depending on your use case, you might want to use the PdfDenseMerger with its helper class PageVerticalAnalyzer instead of the PdfMerger here. It attempts to put content from multiple source pages onto a single target page and corresponds to the iText 5 PdfVeryDenseMergeTool from this answer. Due to the nature of PDF files this only works for PDFs without headers, footers, and similar artifacts.