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Documentation Index

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PDFs store descriptive metadata in two places: the document information dictionary (a simple key-value store in the PDF trailer) and an optional XMP metadata stream attached to the document catalog. PDFBox exposes the information dictionary through PDDocumentInformation, which provides typed getter and setter methods for all standard fields. For richer, standards-compliant metadata, the separate XMPBox module handles XMP streams.

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Document information dictionary

PDDocumentInformation wraps the /Info dictionary in the PDF trailer. Each method returns null if the corresponding entry is absent; passing null to a setter removes the entry.
MethodTypeDescription
getTitle() / setTitle(String)StringDocument title
getAuthor() / setAuthor(String)StringAuthor name
getSubject() / setSubject(String)StringDocument subject
getKeywords() / setKeywords(String)StringKeywords string
getCreator() / setCreator(String)StringCreating application
getProducer() / setProducer(String)StringPDF producer
getCreationDate() / setCreationDate(Calendar)CalendarCreation timestamp
getModificationDate() / setModificationDate(Calendar)CalendarLast-modified timestamp
getTrapped() / setTrapped(String)String"True", "False", or "Unknown"
getCustomMetadataValue(String) / setCustomMetadataValue(String, String)StringArbitrary custom fields

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Reading metadata

Load a PDF and call getDocumentInformation() on the PDDocument to retrieve the PDDocumentInformation object: 
try (PDDocument document = Loader.loadPDF(new File("input.pdf")))
{
    PDDocumentInformation info = document.getDocumentInformation();

    System.out.println("Title:    " + info.getTitle());
    System.out.println("Author:   " + info.getAuthor());
    System.out.println("Subject:  " + info.getSubject());
    System.out.println("Keywords: " + info.getKeywords());
    System.out.println("Creator:  " + info.getCreator());
    System.out.println("Producer: " + info.getProducer());

    if (info.getCreationDate() != null)
    {
        System.out.println("Created:  " + info.getCreationDate().getTime());
    }
    if (info.getModificationDate() != null)
    {
        System.out.println("Modified: " + info.getModificationDate().getTime());
    }
}

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Writing metadata

The AddMetadataFromDocInfo example shows how to populate information dictionary fields and save the result:
AddMetadataFromDocInfo.java
try (PDDocument document = Loader.loadPDF(new File(args[0])))
{
    PDDocumentInformation info = document.getDocumentInformation();

    info.setTitle("My Document Title");
    info.setAuthor("Jane Smith");
    info.setSubject("PDFBox metadata example");
    info.setKeywords("pdfbox, metadata, java");
    info.setCreator("MyApp 1.0");
    info.setCreationDate(new GregorianCalendar());

    document.save(args[1]);
}

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XMP metadata

For ISO-standard metadata interoperability, PDFs can carry an XMP stream on the document catalog. The AddMetadataFromDocInfo example demonstrates how to build an XMP packet from the information dictionary values using the XMPBox module:
AddMetadataFromDocInfo.java
XMPMetadata metadata = XMPMetadata.createXMPMetadata();

AdobePDFSchema pdfSchema = metadata.createAndAddAdobePDFSchema();
pdfSchema.setKeywords(info.getKeywords());
pdfSchema.setProducer(info.getProducer());

XMPBasicSchema basicSchema = metadata.createAndAddXMPBasicSchema();
basicSchema.setCreateDate(info.getCreationDate());
basicSchema.setModifyDate(info.getModificationDate());
basicSchema.setCreatorTool(info.getCreator());

DublinCoreSchema dcSchema = metadata.createAndAddDublinCoreSchema();
dcSchema.setTitle(info.getTitle());
dcSchema.setDescription(info.getSubject());
dcSchema.addCreator("PDFBox");

PDMetadata metadataStream = new PDMetadata(document);
catalog.setMetadata(metadataStream);

XmpSerializer serializer = new XmpSerializer();
ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
serializer.serialize(metadata, baos, false);
metadataStream.importXMPMetadata(baos.toByteArray());
For full XMP support, including reading and writing all XMP schemas, see the XMPBox module. XMPBox is a separate artifact (org.apache.pdfbox:xmpbox) that provides schema classes for Dublin Core, XMP Basic, Adobe PDF, and other standard namespaces.

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