https://github.com/cityssm/pdfFlattener

PDF Flattener - Secure PDF documents by making floating redactions and form entries permanent.
https://github.com/cityssm/pdfFlattener

flatten java pdf pdf-flattener pdf-forms pdfbox redaction security

Last synced: 3 months ago
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PDF Flattener - Secure PDF documents by making floating redactions and form entries permanent.

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/cityssm/pdfFlattener
• Owner: cityssm
• License: apache-2.0
• Created: 2018-12-13T15:04:35.000Z (almost 6 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2021-12-03T14:01:06.000Z (almost 3 years ago)
• Last Synced: 2024-06-25T00:41:22.736Z (5 months ago)
• Topics: flatten, java, pdf, pdf-flattener, pdf-forms, pdfbox, redaction, security
• Language: Java
• Homepage:
• Size: 21.9 MB
• Stars: 11
• Watchers: 2
• Forks: 2
• Open Issues: 1
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md
  • License: LICENSE

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README

        
# PDF Flattener

Properly redacting PDF files can be an expensive job.

Oftentimes, files are released with the impression that they are redacted because you can't *see* the redacted text.

In reality, those big black rectangles can be removed quite easily with the [right editor](https://inkscape.org/),

leaving behind the confidential text that should have been removed.

Preseving PDF form content can be a concern as well.  How can we be assured that form content is not altered after we receive it?

When a PDF is flattened, the layered content, like those floating black rectangles and form fields, are all combined into a single image layer.

There are many high cost solutions to achieve this.

It can also be done with freely available PDF libraries.

This solution uses [Apache PDFBox](https://pdfbox.apache.org/), which is available under [the Apache License](https://www.apache.org/licenses/).

This project is licensed under the same license.

## Libraries Used

This project, along with all the libraries it uses are licensed under [the Apache License](https://www.apache.org/licenses/).

- [Apache PDFBox](https://pdfbox.apache.org/)

- [Apache Commons Logging](https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-logging/)

For convenience, these binaries are bundled into the main build.

## Requirements

- PDFBox requires at least Java 8 to run.  This project is compiled to work with Java 8 or better.

- Memory.  Depending on the size of your PDF, it may take over 1 GB of memory to process it.

## Usage

[How to Redact in Adobe Acrobat Reader for Free](HOWTO.md)

Check the Releases for an executable JAR file.  Note that the executable JAR makes use of Java's `JFileChooser` class, so a GUI is required.

Alternatively, you can include the JAR file in your project, and call the static `flattenPDF(File src, File dest)` method.