How to insert content in the middle of a page in a PDF using IText

Question

I have a requirement to insert Content into the middle of the page in a PDF.

The Content may be a Dynamic Table or an Image.

My Concept was to first split the PDF into 2 parts, then get the new Content that is to be added and append by replacing a place holder field.

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the Splitting is called Tiling as per IText and here is an example for the same. http://itextpdf.com/examples/iia.php?id=116

The Code above has 2 drawbacks: 1. It splits the page into 16 parts. but that is part of the example. Still i cant figure out a way to split the file into 2 parts only. 2. secondly the split page is converted to a complete page thus disturbing its proportions.

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The Rearranging code is the another problem.

The remaining Content should be re-ordered in append mode. but till yet i have only found codes to add complete new pages rather than just the content.

I have found a code that appends the PDF content by replacing a placeholder:

float[] fieldPosition= pdfTemplate.getAcroFields().getFieldPositions("tableField");
PdfPTable table = buildTable();
PdfContentByte cb = stamper.getOverContent(1);
table.writeSelectedRows(0, -1, fieldPosition[1],fieldPosition[4],cb);

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Please help me to solve this requirement.

Answer 1

PDF is a presentation format, not an edition format. In other words, it is not designed to allow content insertion, with the original content reflowing gracefully. As a consequence, no tool (at least, none that I know of, and surely not iText) will enable you to achieve what you were given as a requirement.

My advice :

• refuse the assignment since it's not feasible, or
• get your hands on the original document, insert the desired extra content, and then convert to PDF.