How to find PDF page size in Java

Mark Stephens

4 years ago

PDF files are not directly supported by Java. This tutorial shows you how to extract PDF page size (height and width) from a PDF file in simple steps using JPedal Java PDF library. The page size can be defined in Centimetres, Inches and pixels.

Why use a third-party library to handle PDF files?

PDF files are a very complex binary/text hybrid data structure which is a subset of the even more complicated Postscript format. In this example, we will use our JPedal Java PDF library to make this task simple.

How to find PDF page size in Java

Create a File handle, InputStream, or URL pointing to the PDF file
```
PdfUtilities extract=new PdfUtilities(path);
```
Include a password if file password protected
```
extract.setPassword("password");
```
Open the PDF file
```
if (extract.openPDFFile()) {
```

Extract the data for each page

if (extract.openPDFFile()) {
      float[] pageDimensions = extract.getPageDimensions(pageNum, 
      PageUnits.Inches, PageSizeType.CropBox);
}
}

Close the PDF file
```
 extract.closePDFfile();
```

Further useful links

Blog post explaining how MediaBox and CropBox define a PDF page size
Javadoc link to PageSizeType class which defines whether to use MediaBox or CropBox (if in doubt use CropBox)
Javadoc link to PageUnits class which defines sizes
Javadoc link to PageUtilities class which documents this Utility class