Apache PDFBox - Merge PDFs

🔧 Operation Name

Apache PDFBox - Merge PDFs mergePdfs

---

🧾 Description

Combines two or more PDF documents into a single unified PDF. Each input file is processed in-memory using PDFBox's random-access buffering to ensure full compatibility with PDFBox 3.0.x.

Ideal for combining related documents before delivery, archiving, or downstream transformation.

---

✅ Inputs

• PDF Files [List of Binary] (List<InputStream>) A list of PDF streams to merge. Must contain at least two. Provided via a DataWeave expression or flow variable (e.g., #[payload], #[vars.myList]).

---

📤 Output

• Payload: InputStream (binary stream) A single merged PDF containing all input documents, in the order provided.

• Attributes: PdfBoxFileAttributes Metadata from the merged output which will be from the FIRST pdf except total page count will be the combined page total of merged pdf: total page count, file size, title, author, etc.

---

🧪 MuleSoft Flow Example

Here’s how to call this operation in a MuleSoft flow:

Anypoint Code Builder

<mule xmlns="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core" xmlns:doc="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/documentation" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xmlns:ee="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/ee/core"
	xmlns:pdfbox="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/pdfbox"
	xmlns:file="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/file" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core/current/mule.xsd
	http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/ee/core http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/ee/core/current/mule-ee.xsd
	http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/pdfbox http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/pdfbox/current/mule-pdfbox.xsd
	http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/file http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/file/current/mule-file.xsd">

  <flow name="main">
    <scheduler doc:name="Scheduler" doc:id="cjvhev" >
      <scheduling-strategy>
        <fixed-frequency timeUnit="HOURS"/>
      </scheduling-strategy>
    </scheduler>
    <flow-ref  name="apacheApache PDFBox - Merge PDFs"/>
  </flow>
  
  <sub-flow name="apacheApache PDFBox - Merge PDFs">
    <ee:transform doc:name="Transform" doc:id="llryqt" >
      <ee:message >
        <ee:set-payload ><![CDATA[%dw 2.0
output application/java
---
[
  readUrl("https://www.adobe.com/support/products/enterprise/knowledgecenter/media/c4611_sample_explain.pdf", "application/octet-stream") as Binary,
	readUrl("https://pdfobject.com/pdf/pdf_open_parameters_acro8.pdf", "application/octet-stream") as Binary
]]]></ee:set-payload>
      </ee:message>
    </ee:transform>
    <pdfbox:merge-pdfs doc:name="Apache PDFBox - Merge PDFs" doc:id="otleor" />
    <logger doc:name="Logger" doc:id="dulyhd" message='#[%dw 2.0
output text
---
"\n\n Apache PDFBox - Merge PDFs" 
++ "\n\n⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄"
++ "\n\nMerge PDFs Attributes: " ++ (write(attributes, "application/json")) as String
++ "\n\n^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^"
++ "\n\n Apache PDFBox - Merge PDFs" 
++ "\n\n"]'/>
    <file:write path="test.pdf" doc:name="Write" doc:id="lfnruk" />
    </sub-flow>
</mule>

Example Dataweave for Input Array of Binaries:

%dw 2.0
output application/java
---
[
	readUrl("https://www.adobe.com/support/products/enterprise/knowledgecenter/media/c4611_sample_explain.pdf", "application/octet-stream") as Binary,
	readUrl("https://pdfobject.com/pdf/pdf_open_parameters_acro8.pdf", "application/octet-stream") as Binary
]

Advised: Add MuleSoftForge Apache PDFBox - Merge pdfs component and make no change

🔍 Notes

• Input must contain at least two PDF files, or the operation will throw an error.

• The merge order follows the order of the List<InputStream> provided — be careful with how your list is constructed.

• All documents are merged in memory using RandomAccessReadBuffer, compatible with PDFBox 3.0.4.

• If input streams are empty (0 bytes), they will still be processed unless you add a pre-filter.

• Ideal for combining invoices, attachments, or generating consolidated output PDFs

---

Underlying Application Interface:

pdfbox 3.0.6 javadoc (org.apache.pdfbox)javadoc.io

Pseudo Code

 Operation: mergePdfs

Input:
  pdfFiles: A List of InputStreams, where each InputStream is the binary content of a PDF file. Must contain at least two InputStreams.
  streamingHelper: MuleSoft StreamingHelper (for context/utilities - not directly used in logic shown).

Output:
  Result containing:
    - Merged PDF content (InputStream) as output.
    - PDF file attributes (PdfBoxFileAttributes) of the merged document as attributes.

Errors:
  PDF_PROCESSING_ERROR: If fewer than two PDF files are provided, or if the merge or saving fails.
  PDF_LOAD_FAILED: If the merged PDF document cannot be loaded for metadata extraction.
  PDF_METADATA_EXTRACTION_FAILED: If metadata cannot be retrieved from the merged document.
  IOException: If reading input streams or closing resources fails.

Steps:
1. Check the size of the input `pdfFiles` list.
2. If the size is less than 2, throw a ModuleException with PDF_PROCESSING_ERROR and a message indicating that at least two files are required.
3. Create a new ByteArrayOutputStream to write the merged PDF content to.
4. Create a new PDFMergerUtility instance.
5. Set the destination stream of the PDFMergerUtility to the ByteArrayOutputStream.
6. Initialize an empty List to store RandomAccessRead buffers created from the input streams.
7. Try Block:
   a. Iterate through each InputStream in the input `pdfFiles` list:
      i. Convert the current InputStream to a byte array using the `toByteArray` helper method.
      ii. Create a new RandomAccessReadBuffer from the byte array.
      iii. Add the created RandomAccessReadBuffer to the list of buffers.
      iv. Add the created RandomAccessReadBuffer as a source to the PDFMergerUtility.
   b. Call the `mergeDocuments(null)` method on the PDFMergerUtility to perform the merge operation.
   c. Get the byte array from the ByteArrayOutputStream (this is the merged PDF content).
   d. Try-with-Resources Block (for loading the merged document for metadata):
      i. Load the merged PDF byte array into a PDDocument using PDFBox Loader.
      ii. If loading fails, this block will throw an IOException, which will be caught by the outer catch block.
      iii. Extract metadata from the loaded merged PDDocument and get the size of the merged byte array using the `extractPdfMetadata` helper method.
      iv. Create a Result object containing:
          - A new InputStream created from the merged byte array as the output.
          - Set the media type to APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM.
          - The extracted PdfBoxFileAttributes object as attributes.
      v. Return the Result object.
   e. End Try-with-Resources Block.
8. Catch Block (for IOException):
   a. If any IOException occurs during the Try Block (reading streams, merging, saving, loading merged doc), catch it.
   b. Throw a ModuleException with PDF_PROCESSING_ERROR and the original IOException as the cause.
9. Finally Block:
   a. Iterate through the list of created RandomAccessRead buffers.
   b. For each buffer, attempt to close it.
   c. If closing a buffer throws an IOException, log a warning but continue closing other buffers.

Methods used from the Apache PDFBox library

• org.apache.pdfbox.multipdf.PDFMergerUtility(): The constructor is used in Step 4 to create an instance of the utility class responsible for merging.

• org.apache.pdfbox.multipdf.PDFMergerUtility.setDestinationStream(OutputStream outputStream): Used in Step 5 to tell the merger where to write the resulting merged PDF.

• org.apache.pdfbox.io.RandomAccessReadBuffer(byte[] bytes): The constructor is used in Step 7a ii to create a buffer from the byte array of each input PDF. This buffer is required by the merger utility.

• org.apache.pdfbox.multipdf.PDFMergerUtility.addSource(RandomAccessRead source): Used in Step 7a iv within the loop to add each input PDF (represented by a RandomAccessReadBuffer) to the list of documents to be merged.

• org.apache.pdfbox.multipdf.PDFMergerUtility.mergeDocuments(MemoryUsageSetting memoryUsageSetting): Used in Step 7b to perform the actual merging process. The null argument indicates default memory usage settings.

• org.apache.pdfbox.Loader.loadPDF(byte[] input): Used in Step 7d i within a try-with-resources block to load the newly created merged PDF byte array into a PDDocument object, specifically for the purpose of extracting its metadata.

• org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument.getDocumentInformation(): Used within the extractPdfMetadata helper method (called in Step 7d iii) to get the metadata dictionary of the merged document.

• org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument.getNumberOfPages(): Used within the extractPdfMetadata helper method (called in Step 7d iii) to get the page count of the merged document.

• org.apache.pdfbox.io.RandomAccessRead.close(): Used in Step 9b within the finally block to close the RandomAccessReadBuffer resources that were created for each input PDF.

• org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument.close(): Used implicitly by the try-with-resources block in Step 7d to close the PDDocument created from the merged bytes after metadata extraction.