Apache PDFBox - Rotate Pages

🔧 Operation Name

Apache PDFBox - Rotate Pages rotatePages

🧾 Description

Rotates one or more pages in a PDF document clockwise by 90, 180, or 270 degrees. You can optionally limit the rotation to specific pages using a page range.

✅ Inputs

Parameter

Type

Required

Description

PDF File [Binary]

InputStream (Binary)

✅

The PDF file to rotate.

Degrees

Integer

✅

The rotation angle: must be one of 90, 180, or 270.

Page Range

String

❌ (Optional)

A comma-separated list of pages and/or ranges to rotate (e.g., 1,3,5-6). If not provided, all pages will be rotated.

📤 Output

Payload: InputStream (Binary) A new binary PDF stream with the specified pages rotated.
Attributes: PdfBoxFileAttributes Includes original PDF metadata such as:
- numberOfPages
- title, author, etc.

🧪 MuleSoft Flow Example

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

This example uses both Filter and Rotate as our test pdf is password protected so we use a filter to effectively make a copy

<mule
	xmlns="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core"
	xmlns:doc="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/documentation"
	xmlns:pdfbox="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/pdfbox"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	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/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="dsgkfy" >
			<scheduling-strategy>
				<fixed-frequency timeUnit="HOURS"/>
			</scheduling-strategy>
		</scheduler>
		<flow-ref name="Apache PDFBox - Rotate Pages" />
	</flow>
	
	<sub-flow name="Apache PDFBox - Rotate Pages">
		<set-payload doc:id="vxsfk4" doc:name="Set payload" mimeType="application/octet-stream" value='#[%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]'></set-payload>
		<pdfbox:filter-pages doc:name="Apache PDFBox - Filter Pages" doc:id="fryjll" removeBlankPages="YES"/>
		<pdfbox:rotate-pdf-pages rotationAngle="ROTATION_90" doc:name="Apache PDFBox - Rotate Pages" doc:id="gvirqt" pageRange="2"/>
		<logger doc:name="Logger" doc:id="ecdqs4s" message='#[%dw 2.0
output text
---
"\n\n Apache PDFBox - Rotate Pages" 
++ "\n\n⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄"
++ "\n\nRotate Pages Attributes: " ++ (write(attributes, "application/json")) as String
++ "\n\n^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^"
++ "\n\n Apache PDFBox - Rotate Pages" 
++ "\n\n"]'/>
		<file:write path="test.pdf" doc:name="Write" doc:id="edxzk4" />
	</sub-flow>

</mule>

🔍 Notes

Degrees must be one of: 90, 180, or 270. Other values will trigger a validation error.
If pageRange is omitted, all pages will be rotated.
Rotation is applied clockwise from the current orientation.
Useful for correcting scanned documents or preparing them for display.

Underlying Application Interface:

pdfbox 3.0.4 javadoc (org.apache.pdfbox)

Pseudo Code

 Operation: rotatePdfPages

Input:
  pdfFile: Binary content of the PDF (InputStream)
  pageRange: Comma-separated string of pages or ranges to rotate (Optional)
  rotationAngle: The angle in degrees to rotate the pages (e.g., 90, 180, 270)
  streamingHelper: MuleSoft StreamingHelper (for context/utilities)

Output:
  Result containing:
    - Rotated PDF content (InputStream) as output
    - PDF file attributes of the rotated document as attributes

Errors:
  PDF_LOAD_FAILED: If the PDF document cannot be loaded (corrupt or invalid).
  PDF_PROCESSING_ERROR: If there's an error during rotation or saving the document.
  PDF_INVALID_PAGE_RANGE: If the provided pageRange format is invalid.

Steps:
1. Convert the input `pdfFile` InputStream to a byte array.
2. Get the size of the byte array (originalPdfSize).
3. Try to load the PDF document from the byte array using PDFBox Loader.
4. If loading fails, throw a ModuleException with PDF_LOAD_FAILED.
5. Get the total number of pages from the loaded PDF document.
6. Parse the `pageRange` string into a Set of unique page numbers to rotate.
   - If `pageRange` is null or empty, include all pages.
   - Validate the format and bounds of the page range using the `parsePageRange` helper logic.
   - If parsing or validation fails, throw a ModuleException with PDF_INVALID_PAGE_RANGE.
7. Get the integer value of the `rotationAngle`.
8. Iterate through each page number in the parsed Set of pages to rotate:
   a. Check if the page number is valid (between 1 and totalPages).
   b. If valid, get the corresponding PDPage object from the document (adjusting for 0-based index).
   c. Set the rotation of the PDPage object to the specified `rotationAngle` value.
9. After rotating the specified pages, save the modified PDDocument to a ByteArrayOutputStream.
10. If saving fails, throw a ModuleException with PDF_PROCESSING_ERROR.
11. Create PdfBoxFileAttributes for the rotated document:
    - Set the number of pages (same as original unless pages were somehow removed, which isn't the case here).
    - Set the pdfSize from the size of the ByteArrayOutputStream.
    - Optionally, extract and set other metadata fields from the modified document (though the Java code only sets pages and size in the rotate operation's attributes creation).
12. Create a Result object containing:
    - An InputStream created from the ByteArrayOutputStream (the rotated PDF content) as the output.
    - Set the media type to APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM.
    - The created PdfBoxFileAttributes object as attributes.
13. Return the Result object.
14. Ensure the loaded PDF document is closed properly after processing (using try-with-resources or a finally block).

Methods used from the Apache PDFBox library

org.apache.pdfbox.Loader.loadPDF(byte[] input): Used to load the PDF document from a byte array (Step 3).
org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument.getNumberOfPages(): Used to get the total number of pages in the loaded document (Step 5) and when creating attributes (Step 11).
org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument.getPage(int pageIndex): Used to get a specific page object by its index (Step 8b).
org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPage.setRotation(int rotation): Used to set the rotation angle for a specific page (Step 8c).
org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument.save(OutputStream output): Used to save the modified document to an output stream (Step 9).
org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument.close(): Used to close the loaded document and release resources (Step 14).

PreviousApache PDFBox - Merge PDFs NextApache PDFBox - Split Pages

Last updated 2 months ago