A discussion on Adobe forums indicates that a lot of LiveCycle users are trying to figure out how to programmatically split a PDF file. Adobe LiveCycle provides a simple method to programmatically split PDF documents using LiveCycle Assembler service. You can split PDF files using the bookmark tags or by page number.

To split the PDF documents, you require:

• A DDX (For more information about DDX, see Adobe LiveCycle DDX reference guide)
• Source documents
• Access to the running instance of Adobe LiveCycle

You can write a custom DDX document suited to your requirements.  Some of the most commonly requested DDX are:

DDX for splitting PDF document using bookmarks

In the following sample DDX, LiveCycle Assembler service generates a single document for each level 1 bookmark in the source document (AssemblerResultPDF.pdf in this example). The Assembler service generates a name for each document that is the concatenation of the following items:

• A string specified by the prefix attribute
• A 6-digit sequence number (This number could be used to re-create the original order of the pages after the document is disassembled.)
• The bookmark title
• The filename extension .pdf

<PDFsFromBookmarks prefix="stmt">
<PDF source="doc1.pdf"/>
</PDFsFromBookmarks>

DDX for splitting PDF document using page numbers

In this sample DDX, LiveCycle Assembler service generates documents for the mentioned page number from the source document. The Assembler service generates a name for each document based on the result parameter specified in the DDX.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<DDX xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/DDX/1.0/">
<PDF result="Final.pdf">
<PDF source="PDF1.pdf" pages="1"/>
</PDF>
<PDF result="Final2.pdf">
<PDF source="PDF1.pdf" pages="2"/>
</PDF>
</DDX>

DDX for splitting PDF document using the page range

In this sample DDX, LiveCycle Assembler service generates documents for the mentioned range of the pages. The Assembler service generates a name for each document based on the result parameter specified in the DDX.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<DDX xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/DDX/1.0/">
<PDF result="Final.pdf">
<PDF source="PDF1.pdf" pages="1-5"/>
</PDF>
</DDX>

DDX for splitting PDF documents using page range from different PDF documents and creating a single resultant PDF document

In the following sample DDX, LiveCycle Assembler service extracts pages from multiple documents as per the range of pages mentioned in the DDX and generates a single output document

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<DDX xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/DDX/1.0/">
<PDF result="Final.pdf">
<PDF source="PDF1.pdf" pages="1-3"/>
<PDF source="PDF2.pdf" pages="4-5"/>
</PDF>
</DDX>

Sample program to split a PDF document
Let us write a simple Java program to split a PDF document into multiple documents.   To download the resources used in this sample program, click here.

Complete the following steps:

1. Create a new file and add the following code  to the file
<DDX xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/DDX/1.0/">
<PDFsFromBookmarks prefix="Readme">
<PDF source="AssemblerResultPDF.pdf"/>
</PDFsFromBookmarks>
</DDX>
   For this example, save the XML file as shell_disassemble.xml.
2. Create a new Java project and add shell_disassemble.xml to the project.
3. Add the following libraries to your project. These libraries are required to invoke assembler service in SOAP mode:
   • adobe-assembler-client.jar
   • adobe-livecycle-client.jar
   • adobe-usermanager-client.jar
   • adobe-utilities.jar
   • jbossall-client.jar (use a different JAR file if LiveCycle ES is not deployed on JBoss)
   • activation.jar
   • axis.jar
   • commons-codec-..jar
   • commons-collections-..jar
   • commons-discovery.jar
   • commons-logging.jar
   • dom-xml-apis-.jar
   • jaxen-.-beta-jar
   • jaxrpc.jar
   • log4j.jar
   • mail.jar
   • saaj.jar
   • wsdl4j.jar
   • xalan.jar
     
   • xbean.jar
   • xercesImpl.jar
4. Create a new class named DisassemblePDFSOAP .
5. Add the source PDF file to the project. I have used AssemblerResultPDF.pdf
6. Add following code to the class:
   import com.adobe.livecycle.assembler.client.*;
   import java.util.*;
   import java.io.InputStream;
   import java.io.*;
   import com.adobe.idp.Document;
   import com.adobe.idp.dsc.clientsdk.ServiceClientFactory;
   import com.adobe.idp.dsc.clientsdk.ServiceClientFactoryProperties;
   public class DisassemblePDFSOAP
   {
   public static void main (String args[]) {
   Document outDoc = null;
   try{
   //Set connection properties required to invoke LiveCycle ES2
   Properties connectionProps = new Properties();
   connectionProps.setProperty(ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_DEFAULT_SOAP_ENDPOINT, “http://10.40.18.95:8080″);
   connectionProps.setProperty(ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_TRANSPORT_PROTOCOL,ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_SOAP_PROTOCOL);
   connectionProps.setProperty(ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_SERVER_TYPE, “JBoss”);
   connectionProps.setProperty(ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_CREDENTIAL_USERNAME, “administrator”);
   connectionProps.setProperty(ServiceClientFactoryProperties.DSC_CREDENTIAL_PASSWORD, “password”);//Create a ServiceClientFactory instance
   ServiceClientFactory myFactory = ServiceClientFactory.createInstance(connectionProps);//Create an AssemblerServiceClient object
   AssemblerServiceClient assemblerClient = new AssemblerServiceClient(myFactory);FileInputStream myDDXFile = new FileInputStream(“E:\\workspace\\disassemble\\src\\shell_disassemble.xml”);
   //Create a Document object based on the DDX file
   Document myDDX = new Document(myDDXFile);//Create a Map object to store PDF source documents
   Map inputs = new HashMap();FileInputStream mySourceMap = new FileInputStream(“E:\\workspace\\backup\\disassemble\\src\\AssemblerResultPDF.pdf”);//Create a Document object based on the map.pdf source file
   Document myPDFSource = new Document(mySourceMap);//Place two entries into the Map object
   inputs.put(“AssemblerResultPDF.pdf”,myPDFSource);//Create an AssemblerOptionsSpec object
   AssemblerOptionSpec assemblerSpec = new AssemblerOptionSpec();
   assemblerSpec.setFailOnError(false);//Submit the job to the Assembler service
   AssemblerResult jobResult = assemblerClient.invokeDDX(myDDX,inputs,assemblerSpec);
   java.util.Map allDocs = jobResult.getDocuments();

   //Retrieve the result PDF documents from the Map object

   int index = 0;

   //Iterate through the map object to retrieve the result PDF document
   for (Iterator i = allDocs.entrySet().iterator(); i.hasNext();) {
   // Retrieve the Map object’s value

   Map.Entry e = (Map.Entry)i.next();
   if (index == 0)
   {
   Object o = e.getValue();

   //Cast the Object to a Document
   //and save to a file
   outDoc = (Document)o;
   File myOutFile = new File(“E:\\disassemble\\SplitPDF”+index +”.pdf”);
   outDoc.copyToFile(myOutFile);
   }
   index++;
   }
   if (index > 0)
   System.out.println(“The PDF document was disassembled into “+index+” PDF documents.”);
   else
   System.out.println(“The PDF document was not disassembled.”);

   }catch (Exception e) {
   System.out.println(“Error OCCURRED: “+e.getMessage());
   e.printStackTrace();
   }
   }
   }

7. Modify the locations mentioned in the sample code according to the file paths in your machine
8. Run the code.
9. The code splits the file into multiple PDF documents based on the bookmarks or the page numbers specified in the DDX.

This is first blog in the series of the blogs about programmatically splitting the PDF document. In this blog I have shared sample code to split PDF document using bookmarks. In the follow-up blogs, I will include sample code to split PDF documents using:

• Page numbers
• Page range
• Pages from different PDF documents and generate a single output document