Apache PDFBox Encrypt Decrypt PDF Document Java

This tutorial demonstrates how to add a password and encrypt a PDF document in Java using Apache PDFBox. We also show how to decrypt a password protected PDF document.

Maven Dependencies

We use Apache Maven to manage our project dependencies. Make sure the following dependencies reside on the class-path.

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.pdfbox</groupId>
    <artifactId>pdfbox</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.8</version>
</dependency>

Apache PDFBox Encrypt PDF Document

The AccessPermission represents the access permissions to a document. These permissions are specified in the PDF format specifications, they include:

• print the document
• modify the content of the document
• copy or extract content of the document
• add or modify annotations
• fill in interactive form fields
• extract text and graphics for accessibility to visually impaired people
• assemble the document
• print in degraded quality

Finally we need a ProtectionPolicy in this example we used the StandardProtectionPolicy which is username/password protection based. There is also a PublicKeyProtectionPolicy which you can use.

package com.memorynotfound.pdf.pdfbox;

import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPage;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPageContentStream;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.encryption.AccessPermission;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.encryption.StandardProtectionPolicy;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.font.PDType1Font;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;

public class Encrypt {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{

        try (final PDDocument doc = new PDDocument()){

            PDPage page = new PDPage();
            doc.addPage(page);

            AccessPermission ap = new AccessPermission();
            ap.setCanPrint(false);
            ap.setCanPrintDegraded(false);
            ap.setCanExtractContent(false);
            ap.setCanExtractForAccessibility(false);
            ap.setCanFillInForm(true);
            ap.setCanModify(false);
            ap.setReadOnly();

            StandardProtectionPolicy spp = new StandardProtectionPolicy("user", "password", ap);
            spp.setEncryptionKeyLength(128);
            spp.setPreferAES(true);
            spp.setPermissions(ap);
            doc.protect(spp);

            PDPageContentStream content = new PDPageContentStream(doc, page);
            content.beginText();
            content.setFont(PDType1Font.HELVETICA, 18);
            content.newLineAtOffset(100, 700);
            content.showText("Apache PdfBox Encrypt Decrypt PDF Document");
            content.endText();
            content.close();

            doc.save(new File("/tmp/encrypt.pdf"));
        } catch (IOException e){
            System.err.println("Exception while trying to create pdf document - " + e);
        }
    }

}

Demo

When we execute the application, a password protected PDF document is created. Take a look at the following encrypted PDF document.

Apache PDFBox Decrypt PDF Document

We can decrypt or read a password protected PDF document by passing in a password in the PDDocument.Load() method.

package com.memorynotfound.pdf.pdfbox;

import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.text.PDFTextStripper;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;

public class Decrypt {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{

        try (PDDocument document = PDDocument.load(new File("/tmp/encrypt.pdf"), "password")) {
            document.setAllSecurityToBeRemoved(true);

            PDFTextStripper reader = new PDFTextStripper();
            String pageText = reader.getText(document);
            System.out.println(pageText);

        } catch (IOException e){
            System.err.println("Exception while trying to read pdf document - " + e);
        }
    }

}

References

• Apache PdfBox Official Website
• Apache PdfBox API Javadoc
• AccessPermission JavaDoc
• StandardProtectionPolicy JavaDoc