Read Function    

Reads an existing document.

 

    

Syntax		  

[C#]
virtual void Read(string path)
virtual void Read(byte[] data)
virtual void Read(Stream stream)
virtual void Read(string path, string password)
virtual void Read(byte[] data, string password)
virtual void Read(Stream stream, string password)
virtual void Read(string path, XReadOptions options)
virtual void Read(byte[] data, XReadOptions options)
virtual void Read(Stream stream, XReadOptions options)

[Visual Basic]
Overridable Sub Read(path As String)
Overridable Sub Read(data() As Byte)
Overridable Sub Read(stream As Stream)
Overridable Sub Read(path As String, password As String)
Overridable Sub Read(data() As Byte, password As String)
Overridable Sub Read(stream As Stream, password As String)
Overridable Sub Read(path As String, options As XReadOptions)
Overridable Sub Read(data() As Byte, options As XReadOptions)
Overridable Sub Read(stream As Stream, options As XReadOptions)

Throws Exceptions may throw Exception()

 

    

Params		  
Name Description
path

The file path to the PDF, OpenOffice.org, SVG, or XPS document.

data

The source PDF data.

stream

The source PDF or document stream.

password

Any password needed to open the document.

options

The settings for the read.

 

    

Notes		  

Use this method to read a file into a document object. Any existing document content will be discarded.

You can specify a PDF as a file path or by passing in the raw PDF data. Raw data must be held as an array of bytes. You can open encrypted PDF documents if you supply a valid password.

If OpenOffice.org is installed you can pass this method a file path to any OpenOffice.org compatible document. This means you can read file types like Microsoft Word (.doc), Microsoft Excel (.xls), Rich Text Format (.rtf), PowerPoint (.ppt), WordPerfect (.wpd), Lotus 1-2-3 (.wk1) and AutoCAD (.dxf).

You can pass this method a file path to an SVG or SVGZ document for conversion to PDF. ABCpdf supports a subset of SVG based around the SVG Tiny specification. For details see the SVG Support section of the documentation. You can also pass a file path to an XPS or EPS document for conversion to PDF.

If you have a stream or data rather than a file path then you will need to specify an options parameter. This is necessary because in the case of data ABCpdf does not have a file extension from which it can automatically decide the type of module to use. As a result it regards all data as PDF unless told otherwise.

After the read operation is complete the Page property will contain the ID of the first page in the document. The Rect and MediaBox properties will reflect the size of the first page in the document.

ABCpdf .NET operates an intelligent just-in-time object loading scheme for PDFs which ensures that only those objects that are required are loaded into memory. This means that if you are modifying large documents then server load will be kept to a minimum. The original PDF document must be available for as long as the Doc object is being used. As a result you cannot modify or overwrite a PDF file while it is read into a Doc object. You will need to save your PDF to another location and then swap the two files around after the Doc object's use of the PDF is ended (with a call to Clear, Dispose, or Read with another PDF file).

Object deletion requires that all references to an object are removed. There is no way of doing this without checking each object in the document. So object deletion requires that every object in the document is loaded and for large documents this may place a significant load on the server. Reading encrypted documents places a greater load on the server because - like object deletion - it requires that every object in the document be loaded.

Please note that you are legally bound to respect the permissions present in existing PDF documents. For details please see the Legal Requirement Section.

The Read method may be used to read eForm FDF documents as well as PDF documents. Most PDF operations will not work on FDF documents but you can query field values using the GetInfo methods to return Unicode strings.

Modifying Documents. ABCpdf will allow you to open, modify and save PDF documents.

ABCpdf will allow you to draw on top of PDF documents or add or delete pages or modify document data. However because of the way that PDF documents are structured it's unlikely that you'll be able to edit existing content.

So if there are blank spaces which you can draw your entries into that will work. Indeed you might want to draw a white box over existing content and then draw on that.

However you shouldn't expect to be able to edit and re-flow text that is already in your PDF.

 

    

Example		  

The following illustrates how one might add a large red number to every page of a PDF document.

[C#]
Doc theDoc = new Doc();
theDoc.Read(Server.MapPath("../mypics/sample.pdf"));
theDoc.FontSize = 500;
theDoc.Color.String = "255 0 0";
theDoc.HPos = 0.5;
theDoc.VPos = 0.3;
int theCount = theDoc.PageCount;
for (int i = 1; i <= theCount; i++) {
  theDoc.PageNumber = i;
  theDoc.AddText(i.ToString());
}
theDoc.Save(Server.MapPath("docread.pdf"));
theDoc.Clear();

[Visual Basic]
Dim theDoc As Doc = New Doc()
theDoc.Read(Server.MapPath("../mypics/sample.pdf"))
theDoc.FontSize = 500
theDoc.Color.String = "255 0 0"
theDoc.HPos = 0.5
theDoc.VPos = 0.3
Dim theCount As Integer = theDoc.PageCount
Dim i As Integer
For i = 1 To theCount
  theDoc.PageNumber = i
  theDoc.AddText(i.ToString())
Next
theDoc.Save(Server.MapPath("docread.pdf"))
theDoc.Clear()


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