How can I test if a PDF document is PDF/A compliant using iTextSharp?

Question

I have a existing PDF file and with iTextSharp I want to test if it is PDF/A compliant.

I don't want convert or create a file, just read and check if it is a PDF/A.

I have not tried anything because I did not find any methods or properties of the class PdfReader of iTextSharp, saying that the PDF is PDF/A. For now it would be enough to know how to verify that the document claims to be PDF/A compatible

Thanks Antonio

Answer 1

After a long search i tried this way and seems to work:

    Dim reader As iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfReader = New iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfReader(sFilePdf)
    Dim yMetadata As Byte() = reader.Metadata()
    Dim bPDFA As Boolean = False

    If Not yMetadata Is Nothing Then
        Dim sXmlMetadata = System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.Default.GetString(yMetadata)

        Dim xmlDoc As Xml.XmlDocument = New Xml.XmlDocument()
        xmlDoc.LoadXml(sXmlMetadata)
        Dim nodes As Xml.XmlNodeList = xmlDoc.GetElementsByTagName("pdfaid:conformance")
        If nodes.Item(0).FirstChild.Value.ToUpper = "A" Then
            bPDFA = True
        End If
    End If

    Return bPDFA

I also found some reference to the class XmpReader, but not sufficient to do what I wanted