Converting PDF documents to PDF/A (C# sample)

Introduction

Converting existing PDF documents to PDF/A can be tricky sometimes because for storing the document in PDF/A format you have to significantly restructure the source document. It involves fonts embedding, colorspaces normalization and other techniques needed to produce PDF file conforming to the desired PDF/A standard version (there are PDF/A-1a, PDF/A-1b and a few more, where PDF/A-1a is the strictest version).

All these changes can’t be performed manually, and if you need to enable your apps handle PDF to PDF/A conversion you can use the Apitron PDF Kit for .NET component. This cross-platform library available for Windows, Windows Phone, Windows Store, Silverlight, Android and iOS (via Xamarin), and Mono provides you with an easy and convenient way for creating PDF and PDF/A documents.

The code

Here is the code for converting the PDF document to its PDF/A version:

using (Stream inputStream = File.Open("document.pdf", FileMode.Open),

    outputStream = File.Create("document_pdfa.pdf"))

{                             

    using (FixedDocument pdfDocument = new FixedDocument(inputStream, PdfStandard.PDFA))

    {                 

        // ... you can add or edit the contents of the PDF file here

        pdfDocument.Save(outputStream);                  

    }

}

The resulting document is shown below:

Pic. 1 Converted PDF/A document

Conclusion

Other topics related to PDF conversion and manipulation are covered in our blog and in the free book available for download from our website. The latest version of the Apitron PDF Kit is available by the following link. Contact us if you have any questions regarding our components and we’ll be happy to help you.

Downloadable version of this article can be found by the following link [PDF].