Information
  • Author: Appian Corporation
  • Type: Plug-in (Function & Smart Service)
  • Support: This plug-in or utility is not supported by the author. The content is free to use with a licensed product, but it is made available as-is and Community supported.
  • Industry: All Industries
  • Compatible Version(s): 23.2
  • First Released:
  • Last Updated:
  • Cost: Free
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Home » AppMarket » PDF Tools

PDF Tools

Overview

Contains multiple Smart Services and Functions for interacting with PDF Documents.

Key Features & Functionality

Smart Services:

  • Merge PDF - Merges multiple PDF documents into a single document.
  • Extract PDF Pages - Extracts a range of pages from an existing PDF into a new PDF.
  • Fill PDF - Populates the fields of a PDF Form and optionally flattens it disallow further changes.
  • Create PDF Content - Allows text to be added to a PDF with control over the style, position, and angle. An existing PDF can be updated or a new one created from scratch.
  • Convert PDF to Image - Creates an array of images or a multi-page tiff from a PDF.
  • Compress PDF - Compresses the images in the PDF to make it smaller.
  • Un-protect and Copy PDF - Using the document password, create an un-protected copy of a protected PDF.
  • Convert Image to PDF - Creates a PDF starting from one or many images. It also supports multi-page tiff images.
  • Encrypt PDF - Encrypts an existing PDF with a password.

Functions:

  • Get PDF Metadata - Retrieves metadata on the PDF: page count, title, author, security, encryption, etc.
  • Get PDF Text - Retrieves the text content from a PDF.
  • Get PDF Form Fields - Retrieves the populated form field values of an unflattened PDF.
  • Get PDF Signature Fields - Retrieves the populated signature field values of an unflattened PDF.
  • Get PDF Bookmarks - Retrieves the raw list of bookmarks in the PDF.

Anonymous

  • This has NO documentation whatsoever on how to use this properly to generate a PDF. Alternative - Create a PDF template, Use "PDF doc from Template" smart service.

  • Has anyone run into issues with the "Get PDF Text" function? It doesn't seem to retain the order of text present in the document. It will mix in the header content of the page with the text body of the document. 

  • I'm having an issue when using FillPDF to populate fields in a LiveCycle document.  First I need to offer kudos that it works at all - the LiveCycle file format is pestersome and in my experience has been hard to work with.

    My issue is pretty straightforward: when I fill in a field in-process, and view the resulting document either in the Appian preview field, or previewed directly within Chrome, the filled-in value appears seemingly correctly.  But if I download the generated document and open in Adobe Reader, the field is apparently still empty.  If I open the file in a text editor, I'm able to find the value that had been inserted... but when I enter the value directly in Adobe Reader then save, the desired value shows up in additional places within the binary (again, viewed within a text editor).  I don't know what the exact issue is here, however it's preventing me from using Fill PDF to fulfill a use case of ours, which the older PDF from Template smart service fails at (in a worse way).  If anyone's able to offer some insight into this, I'd appreciate it.

  • v2.2.9 Release Notes
    • Additional cleanup on plug-in uninstall

  • Hi,

    Getting below Error while trying to deploy the plug-in 

    HTTP Code: 500 APNX-1-4198-019 An Error Has Occurred Expression evaluation error [evaluation ID = R067GEJB] : An error occurred while executing a save: java.util.UnknownFormatConversionException: Conversion = 'D'

    Any reason with Environment Specific ? 

    Thanks in Advance

  • in reply to Gelo_Suyo23

    Found a work around. use the "Un-protect and Copy PDF" Smart Service.

    This will ensure that using the function, getpdfmetadata will not throw an uncaught exception.
    The newly created un-protected copy of PDF will be "clean" and using getpdfmetadata will work without an errors.

  • Hi,

    Looks like there's an issue when using getpdfmetadata.

    Expression evaluation error at function 'getpdfmetadata' [line 50]: XML handling failure trying to convert value com.appiancorp.ps.pdftools.types.PdfMetadata@5d283490 to Appian type PdfMetadata (id=3084)

    It appears that there are "BAD" pdf files that cannot be read and will throw an error.

    Will there be a proper exception handling for this function?

  • Hi,

    I am using merge and extract document smart services of this wonderful plugin. Need some help on extract document service.

    Extract document is working fine with sequence of pages like (if we have 10 pages and want to extract first 3 pages, we can give start page and end page) But if we have to extract first two pages(1,2) and last two pages(9,10).

    Is it possible to achieve above use case ? 

    Thanks in advance!!

    -Vinod

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