Manipulating PDF files

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Help / WLanguage / WLanguage functions / Standard functions / PDF functions

Overview
Simple operations on PDF files in WLanguage
Manipulating the content of a PDF file in WLanguage
Types of variables
Operations with variable types
Read and write in controls from a PDF form
Functions for manipulating pdfDocument variables

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Manipulating PDF files

Overview

PDF is one of the most widely used formats for sending and storing electronic documents.

There are several ways to create or manipulate PDF files:

Creating PDF files when printing. PDF files can be created both when printing via the report editor or programmatically, using WLanguage.
For more details, see Printing to PDF.
Viewing PDF files in the PDF Reader control.
For more details, see The PDF Reader control.
Simple operations on PDF files in WLanguage: Check protection, extract a page, merge PDFs, etc.
Manipulating the content of a PDF file in WLanguage using different types of variables.

Simple operations on PDF files in WLanguage

Several functions can be used to perform simple operations on PDF files. These functions allow you to directly manipulate a PDF file:


PDFExtractPage	Extracts a page from a PDF file in a variable of type Image.
PDFIsProtected	Checks whether the PDF file requires a password to be read.
PDFMerge	Merges several PDF files into a single PDF file. Files are merged one after the other. The paths of the PDF files can be included in an array.
PDFMergeWithPassword	Merges several password-protected PDF files into a single PDF file.
PDFNumberOfPages	Returns the total number of pages in a PDF file.
PDFPassword	Protects a PDF document with a password.
PDFSign	Adds an approval signature to an existing PDF.
PDFToText	Extracts text from a PDF file.

Manipulating the content of a PDF file in WLanguage

Types of variables

To easily manipulate the content of a PDF file, WLanguage offers different types of variables:


pdfAttachment	The pdfAttachment type is used to define all the advanced characteristics of an attachment in a PDF document.
pdfBookmark	The pdfBookmark type is used to define all the advanced characteristics of a bookmark in a PDF document.
New in version 2025 pdfControl	The pdfControl type is used to get all the characteristics and values of a control present in a PDF form.
New in version 2025 pdfControlOption	The pdfControlOption type is used to get and set the following characteristics of an option of a control present in a PDF form: option text. selected or deselected state of the option.
pdfDocument	The pdfDocument type is used to get all the characteristics of a PDF file, including author, date created, page content, etc.
pdfPage	The pdfPage type is used to define all the advanced characteristics of a page from a PDF document loaded in memory.
pdfParameter	The pdfParameter type defines all the characteristics of the PDF file to be generated.
New in SaaS pdfProtection	The pdfProtection type allows you to identify the protection options applied to a PDF document present in a variable of type pdfDocument. This new variable type is available from WINDEV Suite SaaS 2025 Update 3.
pdfSignature	The pdfSignature type is used to define the advanced characteristics of the signature that will be applied to a PDF file when signing an existing PDF (via PDFSign).
pdfTextElement	The pdfTextElement type is used to find out all the characteristics of a text element in a PDF page.

Operations with variable types

pdfDocument variables can be used to load the content of a PDF file into memory. For example:

MonPDF is pdfDocument = PDFOpen("test.pdf")

MonSecondPDF is pdfDocument = "C:\temp\exemplePDF.pdf"

You can use this variable to access the pages of the PDF document and the text of each page. For example:

MonPDF is pdfDocument = "test.pdf"
 
FOR EACH PageDuDocument OF MonPDF.Page
	FOR EACH ElémentPage OF PageDuDocument.ElémentTexte
		Trace(ElémentPage.Texte)
	END
END

With these types of variables, it is possible to delete or add pages to a document using array functions (Add, Delete, etc. ) directly on the array of pdfPage variables contained in the pdfDocument variable.

Example:

MyPDFDoc is pdfDocument = PDFOpen("C:\temp\Myguide.pdf")
Trace(MyPDFDoc.PDFVersion)
Trace(MyPDFDoc.Author)
Trace(MyPDFDoc.Page.Count)
Trace(MyPDFDoc.Page[1].Width)
Trace(MyPDFDoc.Page[36].Height)
FOR EACH ATextElement OF MyPDFDoc.Page[2].TextElement
	Trace(ATextElement.Text + " X = " + 
	ATextElement.X + " Y = " + ATextElement.Y + " L = " + 
	ATextElement.Width + " H = " + ATextElement.Height)
END
MyPDFDoc2 is pdfDocument = "C:\temp\plan.pdf"
// Add pages
Add(MyPDFDoc2.Page, MyPDFDoc.Page[5])
// Insert pages
Insert(MyPDFDoc2.Page, 1, MyPDFDoc.Page[32])
// Save modified PDF
PDFSave(MyPDFDoc2, "MyPDFDoc2.pdf")
ShellExecute("MyPDFDoc2.pdf")

New in version 2025

Read and write in controls from a PDF form

You can navigate through the controls in each page of a PDF form using a variable of type pdfControl.

You can read and, if necessary, change the value of each control using a variable of type pdfControlOption.

MonPDF is pdfDocument = "test.pdf"
FOR EACH PageDuDocument OF MonPDF.Page
	FOR j = 1 _TO_ PageDuDocument.Champ..Count
		champ is pdfControl = PageDuDocument.Champ[j]
		let sNom = champ.Name
		let sValeur = champ.Value
		Trace("La valeur du champ " + sNom + " est : " + sValeur)
	END
END

Functions for manipulating pdfDocument variables

You can use specific PDF functions to manipulate pdfDocument variables:


PDFAddImage	Adds an image to a page in an existing PDF file.
PDFAddWatermark	Adds a watermark to all or some pages of an existing PDF file.
PDFClose	Closes the PDF file loaded in memory in a pdfDocument variable.
PDFExtractPage	Extracts a page from a PDF file in a variable of type Image.
PDFGetSignature	Gets the signature of a PDF document as a buffer.
PDFGetSignatureDate	Gets the date of one of the signatures of a PDF document.
PDFNbSignatures	Gets the number of signatures in a PDF document.
PDFOpen	Opens a PDF document and loads it in a pdfDocument variable.
PDFSave	Saves the content of a pdfDocument variable in a ".PDF" file.
PDFSign	Adds an approval signature to an existing PDF.
PDFToText	Extracts text from a PDF file.

Note: Link to PDF Reader control field:

A variable of type pdfDocument can be assigned to a PDF Reader control.
A PDF document from a PDF Reader control can be retrieved in a variable of type pdfDocument.
Example:
```
MonDocPDF is pdfDocument
MonDocPDF = PDF_LecteurPDF
```