save all attachments in PDF using itextsharp

don chu

6y1.2kVisual Basic .NET

I just started to learn C# and have very minimal programming backgroud.

I need to save all the attachments in a PDF. How can I use do that using C# and itextsharp.dll?

Thanks in advance.

6 Replies

Know the answer? Post it — somebody with the same question will find it here.

Kip Hackman5y ago
You can use LEADTOOLS PDF Pro SDK technology in your application.
https://www.leadtools.com/sdk/products/pdf-pro
You can leverage the PDFDocument and PDFFile classes, which allows you to extract the embedded(attached) files inside a PDF file and export the files to file.
See the code below:
string _pdfPath = @"FILE PATH TO PDF WITH ATTACHMENTS";
string outputDir = @"DIRECTORY TO OUTPUT ATTACHED FILE TO";

// Load PDF file
PDFDocument _pdfDoc = new PDFDocument(_pdfPath);
if (!_pdfDoc.HasEmbeddedFiles)
{
    Console.WriteLine("PDF does not have any attachments.");
    _pdfDoc.Dispose();
    return;
}

// Parse attachments
_pdfDoc.ParseDocumentStructure(PDFParseDocumentStructureOptions.EmbeddedFiles);

if (!Directory.Exists(outputDir))
    Directory.CreateDirectory(outputDir);

foreach (PDFEmbeddedFile _attachment in _pdfDoc.EmbeddedFiles)
{
    // Show this file information
    Console.WriteLine($"Number:{_attachment.FileNumber}");
    Console.WriteLine($"  FileName:{_attachment.FileName}");
    Console.WriteLine($"  FileSize:{_attachment.FileSize}");
    Console.WriteLine($"  Description:{_attachment.Description}");
    Console.WriteLine($"  Created:{_attachment.Created}");
    Console.WriteLine($"  Modified:{_attachment.Modified}");

    string _outputName = $"{_attachment.FileNumber}-{_attachment.FileName}";
    string _outputFile = Path.Combine(outputDir, _outputName);

    // Save to disk
    PDFFile.ExtractEmbeddedFile(_pdfPath, _pdfDoc.Password, _attachment.FileNumber, _outputFile);
}
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don chu6y ago
Hi Varun. I am not trying to conbine all PDF into 1 file.

I only have 1 PDF file, which contain a couple of attachments in the PDF file, such as text and Excel. I want to extract / save out all the attachments from this PDF file.
+1
Varun Setia6y ago
If I am able to interpret, you want to combine all the pdf to one pdf file ?
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don chu6y ago
Hi Leon,

Unfortunately, I'm limited to iTextSharp.dll.

Hi Varun,

I came to this forum from that article. That's not what I need. I need to save all the attachments that are in a PDF file. I know to you that might be similar by modifying the codes. But for someone new to programming and C# like myself, I completely have no clue.
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Leon D6y ago
Spire.PDF API supports adding, getting, and removing attachments in PDF. You can search and install it via nuget and then use the following code to extract attachments in PDF.
//Load a PDF file
PdfDocument pdf = new PdfDocument();
pdf.LoadFromFile(@"..\..\..\..\..\..\Data\Template_Pdf_2.pdf");

//Get a collection of attachments in the file
PdfAttachmentCollection collection = pdf.Attachments;

//Save all the attachments to files
for (int i = 0; i < collection.Count; i++)
{
    File.WriteAllBytes(collection[i].FileName, collection[i].Data);
}
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Varun Setia6y ago
Hi, check this tutorial on itextsharp https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/article/read-compare-and-create-pdf-files-in-net-core/
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