Recommend a free PDF developer's library for C#

Question

I'm using VS 2017 CE, C#, and WinForms on a non-commercial application that adds and deletes pages from PDFs. The added pages are created with minimal text and no drawing or graphics.

I've been using iText7, and it's great, but it has far more power than I need, it's larger than I would like, and I find it hard to use.

I know there are other libraries. I just found out about Debenu PDF, which has a free lite version.

I'm looking for basic PDF editing, lightweight footprint, good documentation, and yes, free. What have you used?

Answer 1

anonymous user Use PDFSharp instead. Here is an example:

// Register Encoding
Encoding.RegisterProvider(CodePagesEncodingProvider.Instance);
using (var pdfDocument = PdfReader.Open(@"C:\Test.pdf", PdfDocumentOpenMode.Modify))
{
    // Remove first page
    pdfDocument.Pages.RemoveAt(0);

    // Save to different file
    pdfDocument.Save(@"C:\Test2.pdf");
}

Answer 2

Hello,

I would recommend a free PDF developer's library for C# PDFFlow for your needs. You basically create PDF documents from scratch with it. It supports repeating headers, automatic page numeration, multi-page spread tables and many other layouting options.
It is lightweight and fully documented.
Also, many samples of business documents built using this library are located in a repo (PDF.Flow.Examples), I haven't seen that much from other PDF generating libraries. There are also how-to-build articles for each sample, which definitely might help you get going.

Your first PDF you can create with just a few lines of code:

 var section = DocumentBuilder.New().AddSection();
 section
     .AddParagraph("Hello World!").SetFontColor(Color.Red)
 .ToSection()
     .InsertNewPage()
     .AddParagraph("This is another page inserted")
 .ToDocument().Build("Hello World.pdf");

As you can see, there is a method InsertNewPage() which can be called at any moment.
I hope, this is what you were looking for.

Also, this library automatically creates new page when current page is finished, so the content is continuing at the next page. This is very comfortable, so developer don't waste time for this.

Answer 3

I sometimes use FreeSpire.PDF, it is easy to use and provides a wealth of code examples, but the free version can only be used for pdf files with a small number of pages (less than 10).
We cannot directly edit the text in the file, but they provide a way to replace:

        static void Main(string[] args)  
        {  
            PdfDocument doc = new PdfDocument(@"D:\test\pdf\1.pdf");  
            Dictionary<string, string> dictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>();  
            dictionary.Add("Left", "Test");  
            FindTextInPDFAndReplaceIt(doc, dictionary);  
            doc.SaveToFile(@"D:\test\pdf\1.pdf", FileFormat.PDF);  
        }  
        public static void FindTextInPDFAndReplaceIt(PdfDocument documents, Dictionary<string, string> dictionary)  
        {  
            PdfTextFind[] result = null;  
            foreach (var word in dictionary)  
            {  
                foreach (PdfPageBase page in documents.Pages)  
                {  
                    result = page.FindText(word.Key, TextFindParameter.WholeWord).Finds;  
                    foreach (PdfTextFind find in result)  
                    {  
                        find.ApplyRecoverString(word.Value, System.Drawing.Color.Red, true);  
                    }  
                }  
            }  
        }  

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Answer 4

You can use Syncfusion PDF Library. Using this library, you can also add text, images, graphics, or shapes to update a PDF. This .NET PDF library is designed to work easily with edit or modify PDF files and integrate seamlessly in your applications.

https://www.syncfusion.com/pdf-framework/net/pdf-library/edit-pdf.

The whole suite of controls is available for free (commercial applications also) through the community license program if you qualify. The community license is the full product with no limitations or watermarks.

https://www.syncfusion.com/products/communitylicense

Note: I work for Syncfusion.

Answer 5

I need PDF Book for C# programming 2019 modified edtion